I have been planning to do some sort of radio show for my website Electronic Music World for quite a while. One of my plans was to write a module for WebKoffer which handled this. But too little time and a bit of laziness always held me back. Yesterday, Chris Sisk pointed me towards LoudBlog, an open source PHP/MySQL weblog/CMS package that is meant especially for PodCasts (or AudioFeeds, if you don't want to use the Apple term too much). This sounded like a good solution, especially since you can also link to third party sites that hold mp3's, something that is quite useful in saving diskspace, especially with services like Archive.org and Scene.org. And yes, I am quite impressed with LoudBlog. It's easy to install, and quite easy to manage your AudioFeed. Adding new files/posts is simple, and altering the layout to fit in with the rest of your site is also quite easy with the (XSLT-based?) template system. So yeah, I'm quite happy with it. Check it out at the Electronic Music World Radio.
posted on August 26, 2005 - 2 comment(s) - tags: loudblog, software
I'm sure it's going to be the talk of the web for a short while, but Google indeed is starting their own Instant Messenger service. They're using the Jabber protocol, which technically means people with Jabber-enabled clients should be able to connect. Thanks to Chris Shiflett, I just did. He has a nice screen shot of the account configuration window for Gaim, which you can easily use to configure your own Gaim for GoogleTalk usage. Nice! And Google officially allows it as well. I'm connected using stefan.koopmanschap at [googlee-mailservice] . com ... if you dont have a gmail account yet but would like one, to start using GoogleTalk, just let me know ... I have plenty of invites left.
posted on August 24, 2005 - 1 comment(s) - tags: google, googletalk
[[image:westerbork.jpg:Camp Westerbork:left:1]] Until yesterday, I was slightly ashamed to not have been to Camp Westerbork before. A pivotal point in dutch history when it comes to WWII, this was the camp where over 100,000 jews, sinti, roma and caught resistance were sent, waiting for deportation to the german concentration camps.
Until yesterday.
Only a single day after I finish Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, I get confronted by something more real. Shocking. People who know me a bit know that I'm by far no religious person. I tend to be slightly anti-religious at times. However, I've once spent a week in the community of Taiz� and I've experienced it as very positive. It's a community where people of different religions (and people with no religion at all) can come together for discussion and reflection. I had a great week there. I even attended some of the masses. Fr�re Roger led a mass. Back then (which is a few years ago already), he was not really that good at health anymore, but he was impressive to just witness. The man, from as far as I can see it, has done nothing but good. He actually brings people together that would normally not discuss religious topics with eachother. And so I am quite shocked at his death, but mostly at the manner of his death. I had expected him to not live much longer, but he deserved a nice, quiet death by natural causes, not an attack like this. Unbelievable. [article @ swissinfo]
It is possible already. And here's the proof. A step by step description of how to install your own OS X on your regular PC system (provided you have an Intel x86 CPU). Pretty cool! If only I have a second HD in my laptop
posted on August 12, 2005 - 0 comment(s) - tags: apple, mac, osx
If you've seen Big Fish, then you will remember the huge guy. That guy was Matthew McGrory. Unfortunately, he passed away, apparently of natural causes. He was only 32.
posted on August 11, 2005 - 0 comment(s) - tags: personal
One of the most amazing music video's I've ever seen is the one for Take On Me by A-ha. Remember the one? Where the girl ended up inside the comic book? OK. Now that I've refreshed your memory, check this. Amazing!
posted on August 10, 2005 - 1 comment(s) - tags: music, fun
Today, the new AudioScrobbler will be launched. The temporary page they have up at the moment doesn't really say anything yet. I'm really wondering... will the new site be as good as I hope it to be? Will the technical trouble that have been bothering AudioScrobbler be over?
posted on August 9, 2005 - 0 comment(s) - tags: audioscrobbler
Last weekend, I was just zapping around TV channels when all of a sudden I came by the opening credits of a movie. Now this happens often of course, but this caught my attention: The opening credits were surrounded by HTML tags! It happened to be the opening credits to Antitrust, which ended up being quite a good hacker-like movie. They actually used linux commandline stuff, though using a command like 'hideall' which would then actually hide the files from viewing by others is maybe not too realistic, but it worked well enough in the movie of course. (There are more examples of stuff like this, such as being able to connect to sattelites just by typing in their ip number ) Yes, this was actually quite an enjoyable movie. From the comments over at imdb I gather that the trailers were quite different, and that the DVD of this movie might actually contain some very nice other material as well. The DVD is available already, so I might just want to get that some time in the (near) future.
posted on August 8, 2005 - 3 comment(s) - tags: movie, hackers
For a while, I've been looking at several implementations of Wiki software. MediaWiki is nice, but very heavy on the server. Not weird, considering the software is loaded with features. Of course, a lot of those features are hardly needed, so I chose to stay away from MediaWiki. After trying various other Wiki implementations, I came by WikkaWiki. It has all the usual features of a wiki, but isn't too loaded with features that I don't need. I just need some wiki functionality. Looking at the code, it was quite easy to customize. And fully XHTML and CSS-based, which is also a big plus. And so I now have a fully functional wiki for my Electronic Music World website. I also immediately made a slight change to the code.
posted on August 4, 2005 - 4 comment(s) - tags: php, software, wiki
Gideon Marken is a very cool guy. He is the person behind the fabulous ArtistServer, and a very experienced web developer. It was Gideon who made a weblog post yesterday that found me intrigued. This was a way to look at Open Source that I'd never before seen.
Those little 4-6yr old minds are always hearing about 'sharing,' 'waiting in line,' 'being polite,' or being given a means to explore the world and create. If we look at those concepts - we see a foundation for Open Source. - there's the sharing - the acknowledgement of others - the consideration of many over one - the support and encouragement of creating
Doesn't he have a very valid point there? Somehow, when we turn into adults we seem to forget about these things we were taught in Kindergarten about sharing, respecting each other, working together. We become self-centered people only caring about our own carreer (well, with we I speak generally, there are also people who don't forget about that ) Gideon predicts that people can fight Open Source, but they'll lose. Sooner or later, Open Source will prevail. I surely hope so, though I'm not as convinced as Gideon. We still live in a capital-centered world. Everything evolves around money, where Open Source doesn't. I surely hope Gideon is right and will do my best to support the cause.
posted on August 3, 2005 - 0 comment(s) - tags: open source
I'm currently working with extending an existing application, so I'm working with a database someone else designed. Not a problem usually, except for the fact that this person chose to use the TIMESTAMP fieldtype, which I usually don't use. Now, when I think of a timestamp, I automatically think of a Unix Timestamp, which is the number of seconds since 01/01/1970. This is what most apps use. Not MySQL, as I found out. While trying to format the timestamp with the php date function, I got some weird data, so I checked the MySQL documentation. Turns out that for some reason beyond my understanding, MySQL does not use Unix Timestamps, but instead uses a string similar to the Datetime field, but without the special characters. So, for instance, august 1st 2005, 12:00 would be: 20050801120000. I just can't find any reason for MySQL doing this, but they did it. Of course, after I found this out, I am now formatting the timestamp field differently
posted on August 1, 2005 - 1 comment(s) - tags: mysql
17-02-2012: