Got back from my trip to England last night. Three long days filled with plane (British Midlands A320's) and taxi travelling, hanging round with the webmasters (Elliot, Aaron and Nikolai) over there and getting to know the tools, diner with the sales manager (some nice thai food), a look in the server-room (a small room with an impressive amount of Dell servers and a huge fan-blower thing with the Dell-logo). That's all of the random thoughts that pop into my mind right now. I guess you'll have to settle for this.
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : "Velouria" The Pixies
Last seen movie : "Day Of The Dead" : Part three of the Dead trilogy from George Romero. After the night in the house in part 1 and several weeks in a shopping mall in part 2, the unlucky heroes of part 3 are below ground in a military research facility. Some civilians and scientists in one corner and a handful of slightly going mad army-dudes in the other corner. What else would there be left ? Same story here as in the second one : more blood, guts and shock-effects, less suspense. Movie has an excellent beginning that made me wonder where the hell I had herad that bassline and the shouting people before ... took me a few minutes ... the song "M1-A1" from Gorillaz uses the first two minutes of the movie as the beginning of that song ... a huge sample in my opinion. Overall this one was the weakest of the trilogy. First one was the best. I prefer chilling suspense and some gore above the complete all out gruesome gorefest kinda thing.
"Hellraiser" : writer Clive Barker's first time directorial effort and a cultish horror-classic. Great idea for a book, excellent setup ... yet weak movie. It has it's moments - even some nice tricks from the director - but I could hardly remember specific scenes two days later. Pinhead is cool though. Too bad he's only featured in a scene or four.
Doing this week : Admiring the new and cheap dvd's I bought in the UK (some of them tax free).

Editorial - 16 February 2004

Things can go quick sometimes. A mere day after my last post, I heard about a company looking for a new webmaster. Someone I know works for a sister-company and heard they were going to hire someone. She called me, I called the general manager and got an interview the next day. A few hours later they called me up with a proposal and the financial details. And so here I am ... the new webmaster for holiday autos : belgium and the netherlands.
I'm starting wednesday and will be going to England next week : meeting the people and getting some info about the tools I can use for the webdevelopment. Besides the obvious Dreamweaver off course ... this will be about updating entries in the databases, creating the entries for new pages in the cache-servers ...
Song of the week : -----
Oldie of the week : -----
Last seen movie : "Tremors 2" : comments are being written.
"Chicago" : Overrated musical-crap filled with smug actors thinking they can act, dance, sing and are beautiful and that we give a crap about a lame one sentence story about some tired old clichés. That this thing got nominated for Oscars just goes to show how out of touch those old farts who can vote are.
"Battlestar Galactica" : comments are being written.
Doing this week : Starting up a new life.

Editorial - 10 February 2004

Another drawback about the end of my job is that I have to look for new hosting since this site has always been hosted on a server at work. Easy, close at hand, completely under my control. The site had to be done in pure html in order not to interfere with the other site's - the only one at work I wasn't responsible for - technology being coldfusion and an Oracle database.
There might be some changes in the following weeks. We might shut down for some time, we might switch servers and experience some downtime, we might (finally) enhance this with a database (I've been working out some stuff lately) ... While I'm considering all options I'd like to thank all people considering giving me the necessary webspace and all people wanting to pay a piece of the coming bills. I hope it's never necessary, but it's nice to know I can ... and you would.
Song of the week : "Dampoort Hooligan" Heideroosjes
Oldie of the week : "Going To Town" Afghan Whigs
Last seen movie : "Dawn Of The Dead" : comments are being written.
"Ghostbusters" : comments are being written.
"Ghostbusters 2" : comments are being written.
"Rules Of Engagement" : comments are being written.
"The One Million Pound Note" : comments are being written.
Doing this week : Cleaning up my desk and bookshelves and throw out a lot of junk I don't need anymore. Hopefully that means getting rid of the Java and JSP books which I never loved. It really ain't bad, but it never got as close to me as other webtechnologies ...

Editorial - 4 February 2004

Last friday was my last day at work. The last five years I have been working as webmaster for UNIZO and KMOnet : two closely related companies who provide information for small and medium enterprises. I started working there in january 1999, back when they were an HTML and an ASP site respectively. During 2000 both switched to the same JSP-platform, with a self-built content management system.
Trouble was that I wasn't on their payroll. I worked for the IT-department, yet another part of the big mess of related companies and daughter-companies. They had a contract stipulating I worked a certain amount of time strictly for them. Unfortunately they have outstanding payments for up to 42000 euro. That's more than 53000 dollars. Phonebills, internetbills, maintenance and our bills. After months of negotiating the CEO of the IT-company decide to end the contract, which had the nasty side-effect that my job was suddenly no longer backed up by the necessary hours to be needed. In short : I needed more duties which weren't available. And since they couldn't have me sitting behind my desk twitching my thumbs, I got canned. After 5 years and 1 month.
Song of the week : "My Immortal" Evanescence
Oldie of the week : "Rooster" Alice In Chains
Last seen movie : "Shanghai Noon" : comments are being written.
"Resident Evil" : comments are being written.
"Kill Bill Volume I" : Quentin Tarantino's return as a director was going to be such a long movie, he reluctantly decided to cut the movie in two parts, releasing them within a few months of eachother. The first part sets the stage for a cartoonish splatterfest revenge-movie. The Bride is one of a gang of hired assassins. On her wedding-day she's shot in the head by her former boss (and lover) Bill. All her in-laws are murdered too. Freakishly surving and awakening from a coma several years later, she decides to set out for revenge. In this first part you get to see the murder-attempt, the awakening and the some of the getting ready to butcher whoever's been responsible. Some scenes from her past are added to explain how she got there in the first place.
Grabbing from whatever genre he could find, this movie is stocked with references to kung-fu, manga, westerns, revenge-flicks ... it even goes so far that some scenes of one of the character's childhood are done as a manga-cartoon which is only available in color in Japan. Due to the very gory and graphic nature, the rest of the world got a black and white version. Just as gory, but due to the color palette not as offensive. It's a real rollercoaster of thrills and kills, but lacks in the dialogue-department. And that's one of the strong points of Tarantino. Rumour has it that this will be rectified in Volume 2.
"Finding Forrester" : comments are being written.
"Bowling For Columbine" : comments are being written.
Doing this week : This time I really don't know yet. I really don't.

darkman says sleep tight

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