August 2005 Archives

I will be making some changes under the hood of this site. As a result, you might find that you cannot reach the server or that e-mail is bounced. Of course I will try to get everything back in order as soon as possible, in order not to dsiturb your reading pleasure.

Note: the maintenance only involves sites under the braintags.com and jeroensangers.com domains. No other sites hosted by BryteNet will be involved in the changes.

[Update 2005.08.31] As far as I know, everything went alright. I had some problems with a wrong DNS entry, but that should be sorted out by now. If you find anything strange, please contact me.

At this moment I am updating my MT sites to version 3.2. This is a huge update, and I am running into some issues. My dynamically published POS Blog is currently unavailable, because the core smarty libs are missing in the installation file. I receive the following error message when requesting a page:

main(/home/jeroens/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/php/extlib/smarty/libs/core/core.load_plugins.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory

Error in <MTEntryDate> tag: You used an 'MTEntryDate' tag outside of the context of an entry; perhaps you mistakenly placed it outside of an 'MTEntries' container?

I hope to solve these issues ---and other issues I find--- as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The Internet is a very good medium to get to know new artists. On the site of George I found The Subways, and of course I just had to put them in my jukebox: I Want to Hear What You Have Got To Say and Rock and Roll Queen are waiting to be downloaded.

Fiat Punto TD SX

Year: 1994
Exterior colour: White
290000 kilometres
Diesel engine
5 doors

ITV check until may 2006. Centralised closing, assisted steering, electrical windows.

For sale on eBay.

A bloke is in a queue at the supermarket when he notices that the rather dishy blonde behind him has just raised her hand and smiled hello to him.

He is rather taken aback that such a looker would be waving to him, and although familiar he can't place where he might know her from, so he says "sorry do you know me?"

She replies "I may be mistaken, but I thought you might be the father of one of my children!

His mind shoots back to the one and only time he has been unfaithful, "Christ!" he says "are you that stripogram on my stag night that I shagged on the snooker table in front of all my mates whilst your mate whipped me with some wet celery and stuck a cucumber up my arse?"

"No" she replies, "I'm your sons' English teacher."

This week we bought a very expensive gadget: a new car!

After many visits to many car dealers we were very fed-up with searching. We are happy that we made a decission, mainly because that means that we can spend a Saturday at home, or just walking around. The car is expected to arrive at the end of September.

I just read 'How to tip properly' on lifehacker, and was very surprised to read about pre-tipping:

In busy clubs or at crowded bars, it is acceptable to "pre-tip" the bartender. This encourages him to respond promptly to your needs, and it keeps you from waiting at the bar. A pre-tip is always at least 5 dollars (and more often 10 or above, depending on how crowded or upscale the bar is). Despite the amount, it should not comprise the whole of your tipping. One dollar for every 2 drinks afterward is typically sufficient to maintain their interest.

What a huge bullshit!!! Why did we let it go this far?! First of all, tipping is a way to express my thanks for the delivered services. If I decide to pay a little bit extra, I decide how much I will give. In many places I read tipping rules like 'you should always give 10%', but for me there is only one rule: how do I value the extra service delivered to me. I put emphasis on extra, since I always assume that normal service is already included in the price. I pay for a coffee, and you bring it. If I read in the quote above that I have to pre-tip in order to encourage the waiter to respond promptly to my needs, I'd rather go to another place, since this waiter is simply not doing his job! He should be paid less, not more!

Furthermore, why do we only tip in bars and restaurants? Don't the hairdresser and the cashier of the supermarket work just as much or even more? And who ever gave a tip go the electric co.? OK, skip that last one, since they will never do something extra for me. The point is, I see tipping as something general. If you do something extra for me, I pay you extra. If you deliver the basic service, e.g. you bring me my cup of coffee when I order one, I pay only the required amount. A tip is something you need to earn!

Today, I proudly present my latest work: BryteNet. BryteNet is going to be the name under which I am going to manage my hosting activities. I am certainly not going to be the cheapest hosting provider, but my prices are far lower than the average European hosting company ---XS4ALL still asks €23 for only 50Mb space--- and I can support you in English, Dutch, Spanish and Catalan. Furthermore, the only limits I put in my packages are disk space and bandwidth. I offer unlimited POP3 mail, mail forwarders, FTP accounts, mailing lists, mySQL databases, and subdomains; you decide how to use your space!

Go have a look at the site, and tell me what you think of it.

Coming back from my holidays, I found an awfully empty homepage on this site. For the moment it will stay like this, since I am wading through hundreds of e-mail messages ---you will get your answer---, comment spam ---none of which made it to the life web---, dirty cloths to wash, photos to develop, and a new site to launch today :-D.

Stay tuned!