http://www.zwitserloot.com Reinier's rantingswisdom Wed, 09 May 2007 01:58:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I noticed that even my favourite news aggregator startup has their own blog. At some point one must accept the tolling of the bells, and so, I too, will no longer withhold my many priceless nuggets of wisdom from the world. Welcome to my blog. http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/19/hello-bandwagon/ It's time to elect local municipality members in about two weeks here in The Netherlands. Traditionally, dutch people tend not to give a rats ass about it, instead focussing on the national elections. Strange - local politicians tend to have a far larger effect on your daily affairs, and your slice ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/25/voting-without-responsibility/ Managed to talk my way into letting a slightly smaller practical count as replacement for an old one that is no longer available: Numerical Mathematics. I like mathematics, it just tends to be so very very difficult sometimes :-) Anyway, now that that's done: Thesis Defense Presentation, Advanced English, Written English, ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/25/6-and-counting/ I stumbled onto a book called Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. It's all about how relatively uninformed masses can collectively reach pretty amazing results anyway*. A particular excerpt that caught my attention is about letting an entire audience play pong by giving everyone a big red bat and using ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/25/you-show-me-a-joystick-i-give-you-an-audience/ Some very hard realities in this article from the british Times. This isn't the first article I've seen that basically suggests Africa is still poor because of foreign aid - here is another one, from the german Spiegel magazine. These articles contain some compelling arguments. Yet, anytime aid happens to come up ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/26/aid-is-tricky/ Alper has managed to break his cell by storing it in his pockets. According to t-mobile, that's not proper use and thus voids the warranty. Nevermind that the phone is about a month old. Understandably, he is rather pissed about it. In his efforts to cook up a media hype a la ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/28/warranty-worth-every-penny/ I just finished it. The solution (works only on windows): A combination of the JMF and DSJ, an extremely handy but windows-only plugin for quickly grabbing DV was fast enough. barely noticable delay and instead of the roughly 5 FPS I was getting on the mac, I can push this as far ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/28/turning-an-audience-into-a-joystick/ ... apple is really trying to help developers along. For example, I don't see microsoft pimping rails on MSDN. Not that I particularly like rails, but I'm impressed nonetheless. This is useful and very readable developer documentation. Even for non-os x stuff, the ADC might have what you're looking for. http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/28/apple-developer-connection/ Tried it today, and it actually works. I've taped the event. I think the video requires quicktime 7. I really didn't expect it would work this well. The only significant change I've made between this tape and my thesis defense tomorrow is that I've laminated the coloured paper. Hopefully the ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/02/28/update-audience-pong-it-really-works-video/ Mission Update: Objectives completed. I received a 9. I heard from a little birdie that I would have gotten a 10 if only no one had actually read my thesis thoroughly (it was inconsistent in parts and I knew it, but there wasn't really time to fix it in the 2 ... http://www.zwitserloot.com/2006/03/03/well-thats-done/