One week ago I bought my first laptop, and my first Mac! Here’s a small story how we’ve met, and how we go along. Already before I graduated I was looking for a laptop, the main reason at that time (and probably now too) is that at all the conferences it attended, the guys who owned a laptop where done with their blogpost when the conference was over. For me it was only starting than, going trough my notes and hoping I got make some story out of it. Most times 2/3 of the notes I didn’t use anymore because it was late in the evening all the other blogs where updated and I didn’t felt the use anymore.

So I went looking for a laptop, I’ve met a lot of people with Mac’s during my last year, but wasn’t really a mac-fan than ( and still aren’t worshipping the software) but I liked the machines. In the mean time I visited almost every mayor laptop builder site, and read many reviews. I saw the macbook a few times, but thought it was too expensive for what you got. It was probably because of my total lack of money I didn’t ended up with buying a hp or an lenovo. In that time I also started my first freelance job, and it actually looked like I had some money to spend, so I started browsing again. I wanted to have a laptop that was at least as fast as my current pc, light and smaller than 15” (because I didn’t want that the weight of my laptop would be the reason to leave it at home)

So off I went, for months on row I visited the mediamarkt, till one day I crossed the street and went to the “ expensive” computer store. Once I got in, a little shiny black laptop was blinking for my attention. I thought hey, that is the nicest little laptop I’ve ever seen, and when I got closer I noticed to my disappointment it was a mac. From then I new they got me, their hardware design was so incredibly smooth, that I was willing to throw away years of windows experience and start learning all over again.

Lucky for me I still hadn’t the money, which prevent me from buying a macbook from the first generation, and went for one from the second gen. Which has hopefully all hardware bugs fixed (haven’t found one yet). So one week after the freelance money came in, I went to the Staffhorst shop to pick it up. And here it is.

What I like about it already is the track path with the double finger scroll and the double click is rightclick thing. I noticed yesterday that I tried to scroll with to fingers on my mouse, which didn’t work off course.

An other thing is that its starting up soo fast, in the time of staring my pc, I could have started my mac, got all my mail, read it and closed it down again. (Which has its nasty side affects like reading your mail before you go to work, or read it just before bedtime)

I think one of the reasons why the macbook is looking so much better than other brands, is the screen that fold behind the laptop itself, instead of on top of it. This and off course that everything is in one color, Later on perhaps I will write a separate post how you recognize a mac from a dell laptop post.

So now for some cons, what I don’t like is that there isn’t a decent text editor. I can make music, dvd’s, comics and complete movies, but I can’t write a decent letter.

I do miss my taskbar, where all the programs are, and I actually miss the start menu. Somehow I had the feeling that I was better able to control and understand my windows pc. Although that is perhaps just a matter of learning time.

And last thing, the outside gets dirty so fast, that after two days it looks like it has been used for years, recently I found out that Apple actually sells screen cleaner liquid, so I guess I just have to search for case cleaner than.

But besides those small points I’m awfully excited about it!

Afgelopen vrijdag was het dan zo ver, de uitreiking van de Dutch Web2.0 Awards. Erg leuk om zelf een kleine bijdragen gehad te kunnen hebben in de organisatie. (lees bierkratjes de trap op tillen) Ook de geweldige manier waarom het nieuws zich via oude en nieuwe media verspreiden waren zeker een positieve meevaller. De uitslag kwam uiteindelijk op Emerce, nu.nl, webwereld, bright en zelfs computertotaal terecht. Een positieve bijdrage werd ook zeker geleverd door de hardwerkende mensen van Spunk tv. Al met al een erg geslaagde avond dus!

Hierbij ook nog even de uitslagen. Most Innovative Concept: Zoom.nl Gallery Een Nederlandse foto website waarbij fotografen uitgebreide informatie over hun foto’s kunnen uitwisselen. Best Newcomer: Buurtlink Het nieuws uit jouw buurt. Best International Company: Google Heeft hun dankbaarheid voor de award getoont door deze voor het goede doel ter veiling aan te bieden. Best International App: Netvibes Kon helaas niet komen maar waren op hun eigen weblog wel enthousiast over de prijs. Best Dutch Company werd Hyves en beste Dutch App werd eBuddy die met een team van 6 man er een gezellig personeelsuitje van maakte.

Voor hen die geïnteresseerd zijn, zijn er ook nog enkele foto’s op Flickr te vinden.

Since the start of this weblog I never took the time to finish my attempt to give it a proper design. This month I got a little more time, so I finally present you version 0.99
Still some small bugs to fix, and a little bit of designing to do, but most is there. looks best when filled with a lot of text like this post

The new one:

The old one:

And the first design from November 2005

I hereby promise two posts about this design, one technically and one about ehh design.

All comments and found bugs are welcome off course!

First of all: I wish you all happy new year!

Second resolution: Blog more.. Some feelings of doubt are creeping up again, why have a personal weblog? I like to do things good or not at all.. And at the moment I have the feeling that I’m not doing this blogging thing any good.. So lets check it out:

Reasons for me to blog are:
-Get my ideas written down
-Share topics of interest and hope for feedback
-Stay in touch with getting ideas down in words
-Do some serious English writing
-Help other people by the (re)search I’ve already done

Reasons not to blog are:
-No one really cares anyway, (would I blog when I knew that no-one was/could be reading this?) Probably not, there are more efficient ways to write down ideas and information.
-It saves a lot of time that I can use to click around on Digg or spent on watching videos on Rocketboom

Having shared those little thoughts on blogging, I came to the conclusion that to blog is still better than not to blog, but that I should focus on longer more in depth articles though, that will take more days to write. At the moment I’m writing one about Digg and one about personal identity.. (check out my last one about Wikipedia if you haven’t read it)

Other 2007 ideas? work to get newnew.nl done, so i can blog in Dutch again. Create a niche-blog. I think I came up with a good niche which hasn’t a Dutch blog yet, more about that later.
Going abroad for months.. Or by study or in an other way, I must go now
Redesign this whole blog (the photoshop version is almost done, only have to build the template)

Although my latest resolutions are already from ‘05, I do believe that its a good idea to write down your plans for a year. It gives you some focus, and perhaps some grip on time.

So what are your reasons to blog (or not to), and did you write down your resolutions for this year (and why not) ?

By Robert. Tagging is a game started here and has been around on whole Dutch blogoshpere now. The idea is that I tell you 5 things you didn’t know about me.

1. Svirsk after which this blog is named is actually a place in Siberia. Years ago it was on the news on the Jeugd journaal because central city heating went down, and left people living in houses with -20 degrees. When my midlife crisis comes i would love to make a trip to there
2. When I was young(er) I dreamed of having my own sport car company. The most famous model is the Stimmer 14. If anyone is interested in setting up a factory, please let me know.
3. I love to listen to old lp’s I think I have more lp’s than cd’s now. There are several collections that I’m trying to get complete. All the (regular) albums of Queen, Pink Floyd and Electric Light Orchestra. My Electric Light Orchestra collection is almost complete. Only the first and the last are still missing. Queen is almost complete too, if some one has the last album Made in Heaven on lp, and would like to give it away, hey you now me
4. I grew up in a tiny village on the island Texel. It is called De Waal. It’s surrounded by some forrest and endless grazing fields. Certainly not a bad place to grow up.
5. In my passport it says that I’m 200 centimetres, so I’m probably taller than you.

And happy new year to you all!

As some of you might know, I’m still doubting about going to do an extra master. I did some research already, and the only real conclusion should be: There are too many masters and there is no real good overview. So in an attempt to help others in the future, I’ll put all my gathered information on my blog

Some guidelines I made up are: It should be a master about digital / new media. It should be or in The Netherlands, so I don’t have to move. Or it should be in an English speaking country. It shouldn’t take longer than a year, and it should be more theoretical than practical. It should be more or less affordable and it should look like fun

Based on these criteria’s I came to two options, one hard, one easy

MA in Digital Media: Technology & cultural form
costs are: £3,500
funding: download
Application deadline: 7 February 2007
Application form: download
More information: British Council - The Netherlands
Wilweg.nl (doesn’t work in firefox, tsk..)

And off course the easy option: Stay in Utrecht
And try this one: Master nieuwe media en digitale cultuur

For those interested: 16 en zaterdag 17 februari 2007 Masterbeurs in Utrecht

Ok, next time a todo list..

Al weer een tijdje geleden dat ik voor het laatst iets geblogd heb. De rede daarvoor was mijn eerste na-afstudeer-freelance opdracht. Het bouwen van een website die weer een beetje meer gelijkheid in de wereld moet gaan brengen.

Vandaag werd namelijk MijnBoekensteun.nl online gelanceerd. Lousewies van der Laan en Bart Chabot waren aanwezig om de door hun gesigneerde boeken aan de website aan te bieden.

MijnBoekensteun.nl is een initiatief van Peter Joziasse van de innovatie afdeling van TNT. De website heeft tot doel geld in te zamelen voor world food programme. Deze stichting van de Verenigde Naties zal dit besteden aan voedsel voor schoolgaande kinderen in Malawi. De website werkt als volgt:

• een boek wordt geplaatst
• een geïnteresseerde vind het boek
• neemt contact op met de aanbieder
• prijs wordt vastgesteld en het bedrag overgemaakt naar de aanbieder
• boek wordt verstuurd, en aanbieder maakt het geld over naar het WPF
• geïnteresseerde ontvangt boek, en TNT maakt nog 1,50 extra over

Om meer bekendheid te generen is er ook aan bekende Nederlanders gevraagd om een boek te doneren. Deze boeken worden vervolgens geveild op de website. Als tweede is er ook een blog van TNT medewerkster Dorien die momenteel in Malawi vrijwilligers werk doet.

Mijn inbreng bestond uit het maken van een ontwerp en het maken van de xhtml pagina’s (en ouderwets crossbrowser css-en). Verder samengewerkt met Erik van boekwinkeltjes.nl voor het integreren van de verkoop-, aanbied- en veilingmogelijkheid. Een leuk project om aan te werken, en ik hoop dat het een succes wordt!

I still have some doubts about how to call myself in a professional way. For most of the people it would just be webdesigner. But since the LOI is also a offering awebdesign course it makes me wonder why I spent four years working and learning.

Yesterday I came across this post on Bokardo, where he writes about why most webdesign books are more about development than on design

Part of the problem is that HTML and CSS ain’t easy. No matter what people tell you, the CSS layout scheme is not for the faint of heart.

Which leads him to his second point in which I have to agree too. Way to much time isn’t spent on solving interface and user problems. But on fighting browser-errors in order to create some user-interface in the end.

Which still doesn’t solve to problem how to call my self, webdesigner because that is what I like to do, but is used by so many. Or something like Front-end webdeveloper which has that scary feeling of wasting way to much time on coding..