Most end-of-year lists are compiled of songs from that current year. That’s fine and all, but great music is timeless and you might discover things later, so my list will be a bit different. These are things I discovered last year, some old some new. I don’t use Spotify or other streaming services. I keep my ears open, read music blogs and watch what Youtube suggests. Works pretty fine for me! So here we… Read More »My music discoveries of 2015
So you read the previous post and now you’re wondering what podcasts to listen to. Well you’re in luck, because this post will tell you. What’s to like? But first, why listen to podcasts anyway? Sure enough, it might not be for everyone. But if you don’t mind listening to people talking, you should be alright. I myself, am a pretty big (public) talk radio fan. Mostly because public radio doesn’t play my type of music anyway, but also… Read More »My Favorite Podcasts
ren·ais·sance (rĕn′ĭ-säns′, -zäns′, rĭ-nā′səns) 1. A rebirth or revival. 2. A situation or period of time when there is a new interest in something that has not been popular in a long time. Podcasts have been around for years. I never really had a particular interest in them. I mean, it’s literally an MP3 of people talking. How hard is that? That can’t be very interesting. So in my memory,… Read More »Podcast Renaissance
(This is a crosspost from my other blog, that actually got hacked. This is for you, a Google search user, struggling with a hacked website). Last week I noticed some strange behaviour on my site. When clicking a link on the front page I would be redirected to the same front page, effectively rendering my site useless. What was going on? I quickly noticed my .htaccess was causing the problem. It was redirecting… Read More »How this site got hacked
This weekend I read On Writing – A memoir of the Craft by Stephen King – something I should have done 10 years ago. This book is not a work of fiction as you might expect from mr. King but rather it is the accumulation of his thoughts on writing (well!). I don’t plan on writing fiction, I don’t even read that much fiction (tech history and music biographies mostly) but the rules in… Read More »On Writing – Stephen King
On my last vacation I finally got around to reading Masters of Doom by David Kushner. This book from 2003 keeps popping up every now and again and people always rave about it. I put it on my Amazon wish list years ago (which holds 50 books atm). But recently I came across it again, so it was time. And boy, what an absolute pleasure to read, it was. From start to… Read More »Masters of Doom
We recently returned from a trip to Hurghada, Egypt. Hurghada is located by the Red Sea with amazing underwater life and very sunny and hot ‘above-water’ life. We had a wonderful time! We didn’t visit the pyramids or other famous Egyptian landmarks, nevertheless it was clear we were in a different country. Here are some things I personally noticed (and not read in a brochure). As a reminder to myself, and/or… Read More »Things about Egypt
The story of Minecraft sounds like a great movie script. Notch as the protagonist genius programmer, who, from an underdog (indie) position, single handedly changed the game industry by just doing what he loved. And, making a lot of money along the way. And even more money when he was fed up with it all and sold Minecraft. But perhaps a movie is unnecessary, it is all very well documented already. And most people are familiar… Read More »The Minecraft timeline
I still love Twitter. I’ve been using it since 2009 and it holds a special place. For reasons that I only recently learned to put in to place. Twitter is a protocol. It’s a (unique) way of communicating. I’m also still a big RSS user. Which is a different beast. Very useful, but a much more isolated experience. On Twitter you are connected and present in a visible manner. The RSS experience is… Read More »If I were the CEO of Twitter
This month marks one year of me owning a Playstation 3. What started out as a quest for an ‘easy’ Netflix device, ended in getting a PS3. Maybe it seems I am a bit late to the game, because the PS4 is, and was, already available of course. But for me this presented a great opportunity. Because the PS3 is almost at the end of its lifecycle, so it is easy to determine which… Read More »One year with the PS3
This week, part of the internet broke. Again. Some important people even called it an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10. And I don’t disagree. After the recent Apple goto fail SSL bug and NSA RSA debacle this was actually worse. So everyone agreed on that. But 3 things, regarding open source software, stood out for me from all this. 1. OpenSSL is a great example of just one… Read More »Thoughts on Heartbleed
I always enjoy reading usesthis.com. Especially from “software people”. And I am always a bit surprised when I read what hardware some people use >8 hours a day. Some people really use some old stuff! You’d sort of expect when you spend that much time working/interacting with tools you want the best (newest?) tools. But then I realised, I’m probably no different myself. So, since no-one asked I’m going to… Read More »jan.usesthis.com