When I wrote Oh darn twitter, I really wanted to create this video to summarize it but CollegeHumor was a tad faster. I'll just drop the reel on the cutting floor and just post their Web Site Story.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
When visiting Belgium
I often get asked what to do or what to visit when spending a few days in Belgium. Very often Belgium is not the main destination of the vacation. It is a stop on route from Paris to Amsterdam, or the airport of Brussels is the entry point to Europe. So I'll make it brief:Cities to visit (in order of my liking): Antwerp (Antwerpen), Bruges (Brugge), Ghent (Gent), Leuven and Brussels (Brussel). If you like to visit a modern vibrant city, start with Antwerp. It combines great history (architecture, paintings, museums, culture) with lots of pubs, restaurants and shops. If you like true medieval history, visit Bruges, also known as the Venice of the North. Ghent was the capital of Europe during the empire of Charles V. It is also a happening university town. However the center of student life occurs in Leuven. And yes, you should also visit Brussels. I typically compare a visit to Brussels to a visit to Washington D.C. If you can only pick one city in the US to visit, would it be Washington? Or San Francisco or New York?
What to drink? A visit to Belgium would not be complete without a visit to a couple of traditional pubs (cafes) and sample some of the 8700 different Belgian beers.
What to eat? Did you know French fries originated in Belgium? You won't be able to avoid them. In every town square, on many corners, you'll find a 'frituur' or small place to get a pointy bag with Belgian fries. Try it with mayonaise rather than ketchup, or try a couple of the various sauces on top of it.
Of course try a real Belgian waffle, the famous chocolates, speculoos, a bucket of mussels with fries, shrimp in tomato, eal in a green herb sauce, real Belgian endives or white asparagus.
Belgium is a cycling country. Many cycling champions came from Belgium. You'll find lots of people on a bicycle during the weekend making trip along the various trails. Checkout the fietsknooppunten blog for a sampling of trails and what to see along the trails. Or request the blog author for some recommended trails.
Leave a comment if you have specific questions about towns, seasons or customs.
On Keyboards
When I read the headline today about how Lenovo starting moving around the Delete key on the keyboard, it thought it is about time for some keyboard layout experimentation. I am sure lots of people will be upset about this. I am not. The key input device to a computer has not evolved in many years. I first ran into this when visiting Argentina : because of the Spanish keyboard layout, it is very difficult to type important internet symbols.
Mobile devices already started experimenting. Take a look at the slide out keyboard of the HTC G1 phone: notice how next to the space bar is the '@' key. No need to shift-2.
An internet / geek's keyboard should have the following keys within easy reach: @ / \ { } ( ) ) , introduce a zoom and search button and make switching between tabs (Ctrl-Tab) and windows easy (Alt-tab).
Picture courtesey of android-phone.org
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
oh darn Twitter
Twitter killed my blog. Not really. Temporarily. However primarily a lack of time and a convenient way to just blurt out 140 characters of opinion have kept me from writing on my blog. I did write a couple of posts on the company blog. Home remodelling, summar planning and a deluge of work kept me from posting to this blog. The light might be dimmer, it ain't out.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Going Native Garden Tour
On a hot spring day (92F/ 33C) we toured a couple of native gardens in the San Jose area. Every year, since 2003, the Go-Native-Garden-Tour has been organized in spring. This year there were about 45 participating gardens. We visited about 5 gardens. The common thread is that all gardens use California native plants and are designed for water conservation. This is especially important this year since water levels have been extremely low. Nearby reservoirs were near empty at the beginning of the winter. I have never seen them that low.
My front lawn has suffered over the past years. In part because I have 3 big trees in front which suck up all the water. Secondly, one summer vacation without proper watering and I have a large open patch in the lawn.
I decided not to redo or reseed, but to slowly replace it with a native garden. For one maintenance is low. Secondly a native garden uses almost no water. Some of the gardeners mention they water a couple of minutes every 4 to 6 weeks. That's just amazing.
I decided not to redo or reseed, but to slowly replace it with a native garden. For one maintenance is low. Secondly a native garden uses almost no water. Some of the gardeners mention they water a couple of minutes every 4 to 6 weeks. That's just amazing.
We took plenty of pictures of the plans and their nametags. Almost all gardens had every plant labeled with both their Latin name as their common name.
The backyard is a whole other story. For years the main role has been claimed by Mr Clover and his viral cousins taken over the entire yard.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Crafting your resume
I've been reading and qualifying resumes for an application engineer in my group. I received hundreds of resumes. I have read every single one of them. Being on the reading side of resumes does provide some interesting perspective. Here are a couple of tips. They are really basic, but nevertheless worth repeating.
- A objective spells it out very clearly why you are applying for the job. Tailor it to the specific job. It is the first thing the hiring manager will read on your resume. Often one of the first questions on a phone interview is "what are you looking for in this job?". The objective should answer that question. Do customize it for the job you are applying for.
- List when you are a US Citizen or US Person. Especially when the job requirement states that US citizens are desired (e.g. in the defense or intelligence industry).
- Send your resume in PDF to avoid the layout being screwed up when the hiring manager opens up a Microsoft Word resume.
- Don't call it resume.pdf. I often saved the resumes in a folder to check later in the day. When you call your firstnameLastnameResume.pdf, I did not have to rename the file plus your name sticks out in the file. Keep your brand up.
- Spellcheck. Seriously! This sounds obvious but I encountered lots of spelling errors on resumes.
- Spend a little time on the layout and readability of your resume. When the hiring manager is reading hundreds of resumes, avoid that he or she needs to take a second pass to understand your profile and capabilities.
- Stick with traditional resume formats, unless you are applying for an artist or graphic designer. 2 pages.
- When a new grad, listing your courses and specific project work is a plus and a great hook during the phone interview. "In my fly-robot project, I was able to demonstrate ..."
- When you apply for a computer engineering job, do not list Microsoft Outlook. If you have to highlight that you know how to send and read an email, you are in trouble. Similarly, it is assumed you know how to use a word processor and a spreadsheet. If you created a novel macro for Microsoft Excel, do list it. But detail that is was more than just using Outlook. That's useful.
- If the submission process allows you to add a cover when submitting your resume, do so. A cover letter allows you to sell yourself. You can use full sentences, rather than the short form often used on a resume.
- If you do get a phone interview, do follow up with an email afterwards. Ask for the email address. This is a nice touch and shows you really are interested in the job.
Ronde Van Vlaanderen
It is over: Stijn Devolder wins the Tour of Flanders (Ronde Van Vlaanderen). This is the most beautiful of the one-day bicycle races.I woke up this Sunday at 6:30AM. Why would you want to wake up that early on a Sunday my wife asked. What would you do if Argentina was playing the world cup final against England at 6:30AM?
The Sporza live video feed did not work. Thus I could not listen to the legendary commentary of Michel Wuyts. Plan B: pick up a video feed on justin.tv and listen to Carl Bertele and co on Sporza radio. In a side window I was following the #rvv tweets. (Next week, I'll try out http://www.tvtweets.be/)
It was a beautiful race. Great weather, fast pace and every second counted. This picture captures a lot. Devolder, in a group of four, attacks on the Muur van Geraardsbergen. Just take a look at the supporters. That's the face (and scream) I made in the kitchen this Sunday morning. Next Sunday : Paris - Roubaix (get details at Steephill.tv)
Friday, March 13, 2009
In Stewart we Trust
Bush is out of office. Obama versus Palin is long over. I wondered what Jon Stewart would be zooming in on next in his Daily Show. The answer : money; crooked money; mad money and the role the "analysts", "financial experts" and financial news shows played in the hype.
If there is anything I learned from the dotcom bust, it is how venture capitalists and investment banks shared the same bed. Similarly check how many were sharing a bed in the housing bust.
Thus Stewart went on a mission to critique the financial news channels and found a great poster child in loud mouth Jim Cramer, who hosts the Mad Money show on CNBC.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Why I shop where I shop
The newspaper sales guy calling me at night tries to hook me on a San Jose Mercury News subscription because it's Sunday newspaper has lots of coupons. Safeway spams with me items on sale this week. The Wednesday mail contains the promotions of a dozen local supermarkets. But I am not using any of them. That's because I shop at Trader Joe's. Here's why:
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Android Exchange support
A key feature missing on my Android phone was direct access to my work email through Exchange. Unlike the iPhone, Android lacks a native Exchange client. 
The Android Market to the rescue! I found a couple of solutions. Some of them were still in private Beta.
- Nitrodesk TouchDown (http://nitrodesk.com)
- Moonrug (http://moonrug.com/android/index.html)
- Aardvark (http://aardvarkforandroid.com/index.htm)
- Roadsync (http://www.dataviz.com)
I tried out TouchDown from Nitrodesk for free and opted to purchase a full license for $19.99. So far my experience with Touchdown has been good.
- Email works great. I am pulling down my email every 15 minutes. There is no support for push email. But that ain't a big issue since I do not want to be pinged with email every minute.
- The current version doesn't allow you to edit or confirm calendar appointments. A killer feature would be to bridge between the Exchange calendar and my google calendar.
- Touchdown does time out when I switch between 3G and WIFI. The error message indicates this is a DNS problem. However I have no issue access the internet via a browser. The error is temporarily as 15 minutes later I am able to pull down my email.
- Nitrodesk support has been excellent and fast.
Other applications which I has installed on my phone are (in order of how often I use them) :
- Twitroid - to twitter from my phone
- fBook - Facebook application; not bad, but I find myself regularly going to the mobile or main facebook website to comment or access info.
- PhoneFlix - manage your Netflix queue from your phone. This is a great application since I typically hear about a great movie from friends, when I am not near my computer.
- Skype Lite - to receive and make skype phone calls. When making a skype call to a computer, you do make a local call and will be billed wireless minutes. But that is a cheap price to pay when trying to call my parents in Belgium, or my parents in law in Argentina.
- T-mobile HotSpot locator - alerts me of nearby WIFI hotspot locators operated by T-mobile.
- Mileage - to keep track of my trips to the pump. Unfortunately this only supports one car.
- gIRC, an irc client for Android
- ConnectBot - secure shell for Android.
- Shopsavvy - take a picture of the barcode and find where to best buy it. Seriously! This application has potential. I haven't used it much. The only thing I recently bought was a fridge and it lacked a barcode ;)
- ToggleBlu - one click bluetooth on/off
So what's missing?
- Remember The Milk : my work and personal todo list, groceries and shopping list. The mobile version of the webstie doesn't render well on Android. A native app really would do wonders. (107 replies already on my RTM forum post)
- Pandora : I am big fan of Pandora and listed to it at least a few hours a day. I do get feeling Tom Conrad from Pandora ain't the biggest fan of Android. Pandora is already on the new PalmOS. I am anxiously awaiting a version for my phone.
Update: Add one more application to the list: Radio.BE. I just received an email from Nicolas Braem who launched a streaming audio application for Belgian radio stations, such as one of my favorite: Studio Brussel.
Update 01/27/2009: Version 1.4.051 of Touchdown added a lot of requested features: meeting invites and global addressbook
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