Live from Brussels

2004-06-28T15:35:00.000+02:00

Moved

This blog is being moved...

2004-06-23T02:20:00.000+02:00

Pictures...

More pictures from the soon-to-be Casa Schenk. I went there with my wife and baby after work today and snapped a few shots with my phone, so sorry about the quality. On the plus side, they'll load fast...

2004-06-22T15:01:00.000+02:00

New Baby, New Job, New Car and Now... New House!

Yesterday evening my wife and I went looking at some real estate. Just looking, really, as we were just getting started with looking for a house of our own. We wanted to get a bit of a feel for which houses cost how much and to be able to compare the quality a bit.

But after just having seen three houses we already lucked out: a nice late sixties bungalow-type house with large basement, two garages, new (heated) stone floors, a new kitchen, a new bathroom and a recently re-done roof, all surrounded by a nice garden and in a nicely wooded neighbourhood with a lot of open housing and large gardens. Just in front of the house accros the street is a small patch of forest and a playground, where my wife used to go to the Chiro (a youth movement not unlike the boy/girl scouts).

Also included: a very nice stone porch, a stove for wood or coal, ceiling to floor windows in the living room (double glazing, no less) and electric shutters. The house is situated in a quiet neigbourhood, just five minutes from a Mcdonalds and ten minutes from a large highway. Major stores and shops are also within driving distance.

And all of this for just 169.500 euros, because the owners were an elderly Dutch couple who badly wanted to move back to the Netherlands where their children and grandchildren were.

We put in a bid for the house and now all we need to do is secure a loan from the bank. Normally, that shouldn't be a problem, but if it is the bid is considered invalid and we won't have to pay anything.

Anyhow, never thought it would all go so fast: three months ago it was just me and my wife in a rented house and now we're a family of three with a house and a car. And I'll be working at home.

2004-06-22T15:00:00.000+02:00

New Space Age?

Despite being largely pushed to the background by the Belgian media in favour of much more important news like the start of large road maintenance works in Antwerp, among other things, the first private spaceship ever to actually reach space flew yesterday. See here at CNN.com - Private craft soars into space, history - Jun 21, 2004, for example.

2004-06-21T02:36:00.000+02:00

Hehe

Nice article from some journalist who has obviously just learned about blogging. She almosts makes it sound like a dangerous addiction, like drugs or alcohol. Won't somebody think about the children?!? Read the whole thing, if you're a blogger and up for a laugh: For some, blogging is a way of life...

2004-06-18T16:23:00.000+02:00

Hectic Days...

Sorry for the light blogging the past few days. Life is quite hectic at the moment, with the job switch coming up, buying a second hand car, looking at real estate... Things should start settling down a bit in a week or so.

2004-06-15T11:01:00.000+02:00

Too Funny!

Frank Vanhecke, president of the Flemish Block, the extreme-right party that got 24% of the vote in the regional elections this Sunday, doesn't know how to operate a fax machine. Blogger Luc Van Braekel made some screenshots of a newscast showing Vanhecke faxing a blank fax with a coalition proposal to his main opponent because he put in the paper the wrong way up. Everything is in Dutch, but the pictures speak for themselves...

2004-06-15T10:56:00.000+02:00

Jahjah on the American Radar

LGF reports on a Salon.com article about Abu Jahjah, leader of the Arab European League in Belgium, who recently got somewhat less than one percent of the vote in the regional Flemish elections with his MDP, the Muslim Democratic Party (wonder if that 'D' is the same as the one in 'DDR').

In it, Jahjah makes some pretty strong claims about subjects ranging from 9/11 to 'Zionist occupation' and also compares assimilation to rape and facism. But do go and read it for yourself, it is highly entertaining and enlightening if you don't know Jahjah already...

2004-06-15T00:12:00.000+02:00

Coalition Formation

Looks like the Green party announced they don't want to be part of the new regional Flemish government. That leaves just four options for coalitions, most of which are extremely unlikely. Either a combination of any three of CD&V/NVA, VLD/Vivant, SP.a/Spirit and Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block), or CD&V/NVA and Vlaams Blok. And the combinations with Vlaams Blok are very unlikely due to internal party resistance and the risk of voter revolt.

So that leaves the only possible coalition: CD&V/NVA+SP.a/Spirit+VLD/Vivant, a mix of six parties combined in three cartels. Opposition would be Green party, Flemish Block and one representative of the French speaking minority.

My prediction? Long coalition talks, a tough term for the new government (six parties in a coalition, three of them not present in the federal government) and huge gains for all opposition parties in the next federal election... Any other Belgians or Flemish care to comment? (Keep it polite please, consider Godwin's Law in effect)

P.S.: Google it if you don't know what Godwin's Law is...

2004-06-15T00:02:00.000+02:00

New Toy

Just got me a Treo600 smartphone this weekend, as I will soon have to hand in my current mobile phone to my soon to be ex-employer. I must say it is rather nifty and even comes with a built in camera!

Not half bad for a pic snapped with a phone/organiser/walkman, no?

2004-06-13T22:45:00.000+02:00

Regional Elections

Well, the numbers are in and in Flanders the results are quite interesting. The Flemish Block, an anti-immigration, tough-on-crime party has received 24% of the vote, an increase of 5% or 8% (depending on if you compare with the previous federal elections of 2003 or the previous regional elections of 1999). The CD&V/NVA (christian/nationalist) cartel party got 26%, an increase of 0,3% or 4%.

Both socialists and liberals (economically liberal, that is) got somewhat less than 20% each, seen as a clear loss for these parties that make up the current federal government. And the Green party is back, with 7 or 8%.

Seems like coalition talks are going to be quite complicated. Technically only CD&V/NVA and the Flemish Block can form a two-party government. But in Flemish/Belgian politics, a coalition with the Flemish Block is 'not done', due to inter-party agreements (called the 'cordon sanitaire') in 1991, when the Flemish Block first made big gains in the polls.

So that leaves open three big options: the big three (christian democrats/socialists/liberals) or christian democrats with one of the other big ones (liberals or socialists) combined with the greens.

Liberals, socialists and greens together is not possible mathematically. Theoretically a government of Flemish block together with either liberals or socialists and greens is also possible, but I think that will be the day when hell freezes over due to an ice age caused by flying pig emissions.

The most interesting thing about this is that a copy of the federal government on the regional level has become impossible. That is a first in Belgian politics! Interesting developments lie ahead.

2004-06-13T16:09:00.000+02:00

Back Home Already...

Seems they had enough people to count ballots, so when my name came up I was sent home. Yay, that means sitting in front of the TV with a cold beer, watching the results come in for the rest of the day...

2004-06-13T10:15:00.000+02:00

Getting Ready...

I'm getting ready to go out and vote, and later today count votes... ain't democracy great? Thanks, D-Day veterans!

2004-06-10T00:14:00.000+02:00

Playpen Construction...

Had another 'dad' moment today after dinner, when I put my manly skills to work to assemble a second hand wooden playpen we had bought for Klaartje. Did I mention there was no manual? Real men don't need one, after all!

After putting everything together and after disassembling and putting it together for the second time (to adjust the height), I was sweating really, really hard, I can tell you. Not so much because of great effort being involved, but because we're finally having a bit of summer for the past two days.

And now Klaartje can enjoy it in her very own dad-assembled playpen. Anyhow, I love the little one like you wouldn't believe it: the way she makes cute noises, the way she sleeps on my belly, the way in which she seems to be playing the what-would-this-nerve-impulse-do? game when she's randomly kicking and waving her little legs and arms... Being dad is cool!

2004-06-09T11:22:00.000+02:00

Got Fifteen in Belgium?

Radio reported yesterday evening that fifteen suspected terrorists were nabbed in Belgium, in different cities (Brussels and Antwerp, to name two that I frequently visit). Not many details were released by the authorities yet, but one claim was that the fifteen were possibly planning a major terror attack abroad. There also seems to be a connection to recent arrests in Spain and Italy... The arrested men appear to be members of the GICM (Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain), a Morrocan terrorist organisation that is held responsible for the Madrid bombing.

I don't think this news item is going to have much impact on the upcoming regional and European elections though: currently the story is the sixth headline on the site of the state television news, below among other things a story about a construction firm going bankrupt, the UN resolution on Iraq being approved and the news that the closing arguments in the Dutroux trial are about to begin.

2004-06-07T22:34:00.000+02:00

Opel Zafira Quest...

Since I'm switching jobs I'm going to need a new car, as the old one was a company car. So for the past few days I've been looking for a used one with not too many kilometers on the counter and a decent price.

I've looked at some used car sites, but I must say I like the second hand car search tool at the Opel website best. Which is nice, because I have settled on an Opel Zafira for my next vehicle (I'm currently driving one and I like it very much, so why change?).

But the quest hasn't been very fortunate so far: the first potential one I saw (2 liter diesel, Elegance version) was in Mons, 100 km. from here and when I called the garage they said it was already sold.

The second one was in Kapellen, near Antwerp which is my former home town. It was a 2 liter diesel, Selection version. Only 12.500 Euros and just 28.000 kilometers on the counter. Unfortunately, after a testdrive and a thorough investigation by my brother (who is a bit of a car nut), we discovered traces of a possible accident and, more telling, a soaking wet rag around one of the tubes of the engine.

Third one I found on their site was in Mortsel, also part of Antwerp. Another 2 liter diesel Elegance version, with about 58.000 km., going for 12.950 Euros. I called the garage this afternoon to see if it was still available, and it was. But when I got there later in the evening, it had just been sold...

So the quest continues: if you happen to know a quality Zafira for sale in Belgium, preferably diesel and with a low number on the counter, drop me a line!

2004-06-07T22:28:00.000+02:00

Quote of the Week

Actual quote of my boss's boss today: "E-mail is not a communication tool". No wonder I'm leaving the company...

(The quote came in an e-mail, BTW. A techie had sent around a mail asking why we didn't do anything about D-Day on our portal website this weekend, and a discussion ensued. The boss cut short the argument with a mail containing the above howler...)

2004-06-06T00:00:00.000+02:00

Ronald Reagan Dead

Just saw on Dutch televison and then on CNN that Ronald Reagan has died at age 93. Condolences to his family and to all my American readers.

2004-06-04T16:57:00.000+02:00

Jail Cam

Bored? Here's a link to a live video stream of a prison in Tennessee... Only in America!

Can you imagine the privacy riots this would cause in Europe?

2004-06-03T02:17:00.000+02:00

Woohoo, Gmail!

Just found out that as long-time Blogger user, I'm entitled to a gmail account. So from now on you can also mail me at maarten.schenk@gmail.com. (That link ought to suffice to test the spam filter)

Lucky I found out about this before making the switch to TypePad :-)

2004-06-03T02:10:00.000+02:00

HoaxDex

Heh, it seems that the site that is currently number two on blogdex is actually a hoax. Funny what a bunch of scared American students with blogs can do to the blogdex ranking of a site. Students with no critical thinking or investigating skills even. I mean, congress dot org? With political ads on top of the page?

And they trust it to give objective information about the possible reinstatement of the draft? Losers! I bet the U.S. Army doesn't even want recruits that are dumb enough to fall for such claptrap...

P.S.: I have not linked to the site in question so as not to further increase the blogdex ranking. Check the blogdex link to find the real URL.

2004-06-02T23:07:00.001+02:00

Who is this 'Marteen' Guy, Anyway?

I've recently noticed yet another example of a French speaker writing my name as 'Marteen' instead of 'Maarten'. The funny thing is, this can't have been the result of a mishearing, simply because he only knows my name from written material (i.e. e-mail I sent).

This particular misspelling of my name seems to be quite common among French speakers. I wonder what the reason might be. It can't be phonetics, that's for sure.

An educated guess: perhaps the double-a has an extremely low frequency in written French, while double-e is (much?) more common. Perhaps French speakers subconsciously 'correct' the spelling mistake they think they see when copying my name from some other text or from memory?

Any French speakers care to comment?

2004-06-02T23:07:00.000+02:00

WiFi, a Modern Dad's Best Friend

Trying to get some work done, but keep getting interrupted by a crying baby over the babyphone intercom system? You just take the laptop upstairs and camp outside her bedroom so you can quickly pop in that pacifier when it has fallen out again. And you can even get some work done!

Which once more proves: technology is cool! (and so are baby daughters)

P.S.: You are all lucky I'm no Lileks, or this would cover three screens, at least!

2004-06-01T15:37:00.000+02:00

Old TV Intro's

Just spent some great moments reviving childhood TV memories by watching the movie clips at this site:yasin.be. They have some American stuff like CHiPs and The A-team, but also Dutch classics like 'De Film van Ome Willem' and 'De Familie Knots'... Great site if you have fifteen minutes to kill...

2004-06-01T13:01:00.000+02:00

Viridian Scaredycats

Just stumbled over this issue of Viridian Note via Slashdot. It is a 'Fisking' of James Lovelock's conversion to the benefits of nuclear power to stave off global warming (he's the guy who first floated the Gaia hypothesis). The fact that this guy is now saying this is to the Greens as to catholics as if the pope or a high ranked cardinal would suddenly start advocating the use of condoms to halt population growth.

Quite naturally, his arguments are being 'Fisked', but it is not a very convincing Fisking if you ask me. Most of the arguments against him can seemingly be condensed to:

Nuclear power = nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons = very, very bad (no, really, very, extremely baaaaad! Understand!?)

And what about nuclear waste? That's very bad too!

Carbon dioxide will cause global warming and billions of deaths, all our fault for using coal and oil.

But even that would be better than using nuclear anything! Ever!

Oh, and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island!

Waah! Waah!

Personally, I've been a believer in nuclear power for a very long time. I mean, it is just another natural way to generate energy: just look at the sun, which is one giant nuclear reactor. Uranium and other nuclear fuels come from mines, which means the stuff occurs in nature under the ground, where it has apparently harmed nobody for aeons. So what exactly is the problem with putting the spent fuel back there? And as to the risk of accidents: those can be minimized by using safe designs and operating procedures. Besides, with nuclear power we are indeed talking about risks of pollution. With fossil fuels we are talking about certainty of pollution.

Unless of course you just prefer we stop using energy as much as possible altogether and go back to an agrarian society where nobody lives longer than 40 years and we first have to have a mass starvation to get down to 'sustainable' population levels. I strongly suspect some Greens secretly want this, but I hope not many do.

2004-06-01T10:45:00.000+02:00

The Winds They Are A-changing?

Louis Michel, our ~~doofus~~ minister of foreign affairs, seems to be changing course from rabidly-anti-American to more moderate, at least according to this: Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian: Michel: Belgian foreign policy will change course

2004-05-28T15:23:00.000+02:00

June 25th

Well, I just talked to my soon-to-be-ex boss and HR, and it looks like June 25th will be my last day at Skynet.

2004-05-28T15:18:00.000+02:00

Reactions to my Job Change

Carlo of G-blog.net (who is an old friend and my 'Geek-soul-brother')
John of Photoblog.be
Loic, my new boss

2004-05-26T12:30:00.000+02:00

Public Service Announcement

There appears to be a free WiFi access point in the Brussels North railway station's Quick fast food restaurant... Not sure if it is on purpose. The SSID is SANTIS50-6BFC10, by the way. If it is your access point and you don't want half Brussels accessing it, I'd suggest turning on WEP encryption :-)

2004-05-26T00:34:00.000+02:00

WMD Find Confirmed

Yahoo! News - Tests Confirm Sarin Gas in Baghdad Bomb.

The article is strangely reluctant to accept the implications. It even tries to float the hypothesis that this might have been a shell from a very long time ago. And that it was just a small amount of sarin. And that there were no 'stockpiles' found.

But then again, in the same article it is said that such shells would have to be used in great numbers to cause casualties on a battlefield. So wouldn't the existence of one shell virtually make it certain there were more somewhere?

And another thing: I've read many sites that claim Saddam never ever declared he had sarin shells. Not even before 1991. Also, some sites claim that such shells don't keep very well: the fact that the explosion still released sarin gas is seen as proof by these sites that the shell must have been manufactured recently (not more than a few years old).

Any chemical weapons (armchair) experts reading this who have an opinion on this?

2004-05-24T19:37:00.000+02:00

New Job!

Today was an important day for me: I announced that I was going to quit my job at work so I could take on a more interesting challenge elsewhere. As some of you might or might not know, currently I am working for Skynet, a Belgian ex-ISP that moved all ISP activities to the mother company Belgacom and is now specialized in content & stuff (mainly running the biggest Belgian portal site).

At Skynet I used to be a developer until I kind of pushed through the project that led to Skynet Blogs, the first Dutch language blogging service in Belgium. After that I changed function and became a project manager.

For a variety of reasons, one of them being that I couldn't do enough blog-related stuff there anymore, I started to look for another job recently. And lo and behold, I found one too! Shortly I will begin to work for the European division of Six Apart, the company that makes the Movable Type blogging software and runs the TypePad blogging service. My new boss is Loic Le Meur, easily the most blog-crazed French entrepreneur living in Waterloo and Madrid that I have ever seen...

I will get to develop bits of blogging code, talk to journalists about blogging, do some marketing to promote blogging, fuel the blogging hype, help blogging customers, translate blogging stuff, read blogs, write blogs, live blogs... And I'll even get paid for it!

And you know what the coolest part is? I get to all this from the comfort of my own home... I'm really looking forward to this, because this will allow me to spend lots of extra quality time with my little girl (who has been soundly asleep on my chest, tucked away in a carrying contraption, as I typed this post).

2004-05-20T19:27:00.000+02:00

Insight...

Just enjoying a nice day at home with wife and daughter. I must say, the past month of fatherhood has brought me some insight in certain matters. Up to now I never quite understood all these works of art that were simply titled "Mother and Child". By now I'm starting to get them.

One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen was when I came from the kitchen into the living room and my wife was asleep on the couch with little Klaartje sleeping right next to her, on mommy's arm. If you're not a father yourself, like I was a month ago, the previous sentence probably sounds like a description of a quite dull scene. But I have a feeling that any other dads reading this will understand that it wasn't dull in the least, but the most touching thing I ever saw...

2004-05-18T16:41:00.000+02:00

Are You Sorry Yet?

Loic Le Meur wants to know: : Are Americans sorry for their Country?

He is currently in San Francisco and it seems some Americans have offered apologies for their country and said that Chirac was right after all.
(ed.: not about the WMD's anyway)

My guess is that San Francisco is hardly representative of the general American opinion. Am I right or am I wrong? Go over and drop a comment (or an apology).

2004-05-18T00:16:00.000+02:00

Nope...

Just finished viewing the repeat of the late news bulletin of the Belgian state television. Nothing on the Sarin shell. Nuff said.

2004-05-17T17:58:00.000+02:00

Unexisting WMD Shell Explodes in Iraq

Reuters must be lying, because Iraq had no WMD's!

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A small amount of the nerve agent sarin was found in a shell that exploded in Iraq.

Chances that this will make the evening news in Belgium? Pretty slim...

2004-05-17T17:21:00.000+02:00

Cracks in the Alliance?

The unholy alliance between extreme left and hard core islam seems to have some cracks in it: lgf: Gays Attacked At Palestinian Protest.

A similar rift could be observed here in Belgium when during the last election the Arab European League formed an alliance called 'RESIST' with the PvdA (Worker's Party). Gay activists at IndyMedia Belgium asked a lot of poignant questions about the League's stance on gay issues, which were promptly surpressed by the local PvdA/AEL censors (the Belgian Indymedia site has become a shell for the PvdA/AEL since a long time and everybody knows it).

Which seems to prove once more that their alliance has not so much to do with ideological similarities but more with a shared common enemy (i.e. Western capitalism). And that they both see each other as useful tools to further their ends. But just who is going to get shafted by who in the end still is to be seen...

2004-05-17T00:24:00.000+02:00

Election Stock Market

Just like for the last federal elections in Belgium, newspaper De Tijd has organised a contest about the upcoming regional and European elections here in Belgium. Basically you pay them 10 Euro and you get an account with 100.000 game-Euro, which you can spend on the game stock market. Only, instead of trading shares of companies you trade in political parties.

At the end of the game, after the elections, every share will be worth as much in game Euro as the percentage the party scored in the Flemish regional election. Since people have different opinions as to what the final scores will be, a lively trade develops and it becomes possible to make some money with day-trading as well.

Fresh shares are introduced into the market by the 'bank', where you can buy 'portfolios' that contain one share of each party for 100 Euros. Prices of shares inside the portfolio may vary, but since at the end of the game a full portfolio will be worth 100 Euros by default this doesn't upset the market.

The goal of the game is not only to provide a good time to some people but also to see if the election can be predicted in this way. Right now it looks as if the current coalition is going to get shaken up a bit: after the last election the Flemish government was made up of VLD (economically right, socially conservative) with Groen! (green party) and SP.A (socialists). Currently these three parties (and two other small parties that have allied with VLD and SP.A) are worth less than 50 Euros in the game. See here for market analysis and graphs...

Most of this is due to the result of the VLD, which even after an alliance with the tiny Vivant-party keeps losing voters (also in the polls) mostly over infighting and a reputation of not standing up for their issues enough (at least that's what I think).

2004-05-16T21:20:00.000+02:00

Okay, So They Ran the Retraction...

Gazet van Antwerpen, the Belgian newspaper that I read daily, ran the story of the British Iraqi prison abuse pictures. Now that it transpires these pictures were actually fake and that the editor of the British newspaper that first ran them has had to resign, of course there is a retraction.

On page 22.

In a small column.

Titled: "Daily Mirror Apologizes for Publication of Fake Pictures".

Really clear for people who haven't been paying attention recently, I must say...

2004-05-15T00:03:00.000+02:00

Yes!

Look at this BBC article:
BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Editor sacked over 'hoax' photos. Piers Morgan, the editor of British paper the Daily Mirror, has been fired because he kept defending the authenticity of Iraq abuse photos that were discovered to be fakes. Note that the BBC still puts scare quotes around the word 'hoax'. One wonders why...

2004-05-12T11:49:00.000+02:00

Say "Uncle"!

Just got a phone call this morning: I'm an uncle for the second time. My sister has given birth to Niels Van Grimberge, her second child and first son! And my wife gets to be godmother! Yay!

2004-05-12T01:54:00.000+02:00

More Klaartje Pictures

As requested...

Klaartje Schenk and Klaartje Van Loy...

The proud grandfather

Isn't she cute?

More pictures can be found here...

2004-05-12T01:41:00.000+02:00

Strangely Quiet...

Last week some pictures surfaced of prisoner abuse, which were all over Al Jazeera. Today, a video surfaced where a prisoner is brutally murdered by cutting his head off. Weird, nothing on Al Jazeera:

2004-05-11T12:35:00.000+02:00

Googleblog

Nifty! It seems that now even Google is blogging: Google Blog!

2004-05-11T11:17:00.000+02:00

Unintended Consequences

Radio morning news made me chuckle while driving to work. The genius in charge of health care in our government decided that costs needed to be cut by reducing people's expenses on drugs. So they issued a directive which forced drug companies to lower the prices of all drugs that were available for more than 15 years. And another directive which made large packages of drugs more expensive than smaller ones.

The thinking was, people would buy the cheaper (older) drugs and also smaller packages, thus reducing waste as well.

Predictably, market forces came into play: drug manufacturers, seeing they would have to sell the older drugs at a loss, simply replaced them with newer, more expensive ones. The old drugs were simply discontinued. And doctors just kept on prescribing large packets to their patients, because they needed them.

The result: even higher expenses overall, no efficiency gained... That's what happens when you mess with a free market.

2004-05-11T01:38:00.000+02:00

Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde

That is the name of a disputed electoral district here in Belgium. Flemish parties want it to be split because right now French speaking parties can try to drum up votes in many Flemish areas (which they succeed in because of the many Eurocrats living in those areas). Anyhow, courts have decided the Flemish case has merit and that the current district is unconstitutional. But so far there seems to be little effort being spent to split it before the upcoming European and regional elections, despite a 10.000 strong demonstration last weekend.

But enough about Belgian politics: what is much more funny is the reaction by some Americans (I guess) over at Rantburg... They know little about Belgian linguistic politics and laws, but that doesn't stop them from calling one side facists and denouncing the other side for speaking French. Just to avoid any future invasion: there are no WMD's or oil wells in Brussels, although we *could* do with a bit more democracy and free speech...

2004-05-07T11:50:00.000+02:00

Back from Paternal Leave

I'm finally back in the blogosphere, after two weeks well spent at home with wife and daughter. Since yesterday I'm back at the office, ugh.

Rant of the day: there seem to be an awfull lot of blind truck drivers on the E314 highway. Nearly every two thousand meters there is a sign indicating that is forbidden for trucks to overtake between 7 and 10 in the morning and 4 and 7 in the evening. Yet every day I have to slam on my brakes when one truck or another going at 91 km/h is overtaking another one going 90 km/h on this two-lane (on each side) highway. Grrr, and the posted speed is 120 km/h! No wonder there are so many traffic jams...

2004-04-29T15:29:00.000+02:00

Three More Pictures

From left to right:

Klaartje

"The Godmother" and Lotte, the niece

The grandmother (father's side)

2004-04-26T22:36:00.000+02:00

Last Pics for the Day...

Three more pictures, in thumbnail format:

From left to right, Klaartje with:

"The Godfather"

The great-grandmother (father's side)

The great-grandfather (mother's side), the mother and a niece of the mother.

2004-04-26T20:36:00.000+02:00

One More Pic

The proud father with the sleepy daughter...

2004-04-26T20:29:00.000+02:00

Cool!

Technology is cool. Little daughters are even cooler. Combining both is really, really cool, to the point of extreme niftyness... My parents live about 70 km (ed.: a little less than 50 miles for you Yanks reading this) away and they of course want to show their granddaughter to friends and neighbours. So tonight I hooked up a webcam and a microphone/headset to my wireless laptop and using Skype and the upstairs webserver I presented them the Klaartje Schenk Show, live from my living room. In honor of this event, a third picture of Klaartje, wearing what can only be described as a penguin round her neck :-)

P.S.: If you think this blog starts to sound more and more like the one of James Lileks when his daughter was born, minus the terrific writing of course, you are essentially right. Because Greet, my wife, gave birth at home I am now responsible for making the entire household run on my own (with two women in the house incapable of much independent movement). And I'm loving it!

2004-04-23T13:21:00.000+02:00

Baby Update

Here is a new picture with some better lighting. By the way, Klaartje was born here at home, in our living room in fact! This was a deliberate choice, in case some of you might be wondering. I can say it has been great so far: no distractions from nurses and doctors prowling around the room, visitors whenever *we* want, everything we need or want in the familiar places, WiFi in the bedroom... what more can a new daddy want? (Answer: somebody to cook, clean and handle the paperwork for him... kidding! I'm doing just fine.)

2004-04-22T10:21:00.000+02:00

More News

This morning at 7.21 Klaartje Schenk was born, weighing in at 3,7 kg. Mother, father and child are in great condition, if a little tired from being up all night...

2004-04-21T23:50:00.000+02:00

Breaking News!

My wife is having contractions... I'm gonna be daddy! More news tomorrow?

2004-04-19T20:15:00.000+02:00

Looking for Work?

Are you a young Jihadi looking for a job? Look no further!
(hat tip: Rantburg)

2004-04-17T20:29:00.000+02:00

Scratch Another Terrorist

CNN has nothing, and neither has The Command Post at this moment, but over at DEBKA they're reporting the new leader of Hamas, Rantissi, will have to be replaced on account of being dead.

Apparently Israel dropped some high explosives on his car from the air, causing the number of terrorists in the world to decrease by one.

2004-04-16T21:57:00.000+02:00

Bomb Defused in Brussels

The bomb disposal squad towed away a car which contained two hand-grenades linked to the fuel tank in Brussels today. I found out about it via Rantburg, where they pointed to this article at Expatica.

While it happened round noon, no mention was made of it on the state radio news bulletin at 18.00. Also, on the website of the state television news service there is no mention of it among the items that were broadcast in the evening news. I had to go to a section called 'quick news' to find this short article in the headlines. Near the end it mentions of a similar car-with-grenade being towed away a week ago, and also that the police suspects a settling of scores by criminals. No mention is made about terrorism, unlike the Expatica article which mentions Osama Bin Laden's latest letter.

One other cursory mention of this event I found was in the dispatches of the official Belgian news agency Belga: here.

Keeping an eye on this one...

2004-04-16T00:19:00.000+02:00

Sprout Followup

Over at his blog Fainting in Coyles the chief editor of The Sprout is explaining why he published the autopsy pictures everybody in Belgium is talking about. He also speculates on the reason why a judge banned the further sale of the magazine issue in question, with a €1000 fine per copy still sold.

2004-04-15T23:30:00.000+02:00

Lies or Poor Marksmanship?

Recent claims about the Falujah fighting put the number of Iraqi dead at 600. If you believe Al Jazeera, 250 of those were women and 250 were children. That means 'only' 100 fighters. Either the U.S. Marines are very poor marksmen (which I doubt), or they are killing civilians on purpose (which I doubt even more) or somebody is lying (most likely).

Apart from counting the bodies, it seems there is no obvious way to get at the truth. And since the bodies are in an active war zone, it might be a while before decent inquiries are possible. At least, if nobody tampers with the evidence in the mean time (removing uniforms, killing extra civilians...)

There might exist a pretty straightforward technological solution to this problem however. These days, miniature digital cameras are very cheap, and data storage media are also getting less and less expensive. What if the U.S. military could just retrofit all their rifles and machine guns with a small camera which clips onto the barrel and uses a heat sensor (or some other method) to determine when the weapon is being fired. That way, there would be a record of the target of each shot fired.

If an opponent claimed hundreds of civilian dead, it would be quite easy to disprove by showing hundreds of pictures of legal military targets being hit instead.

Naturally there are some technical and operational hurdles to this idea, but I believe that they can all be overcome:

Camera falling into enemy hands: use encryption

Storage: take just a small picture that only covers the area where a shot would likely end up.

Out of storage space: just shoot without taking pictures

Battery life: since there is no LCD display to suck away the power like in a normal camera, a single battery could last quite long

...

What do you think? Worth trying? Waste of money?

2004-04-15T00:09:00.000+02:00

The Sprout Out of Line?

Just heard that The Sprout Magazine has shocked Belgian media by publishing gruesome pictures from the Dutroux pedophile investigation. These pictures are part of the case file against Dutroux, but apparently everybody in the Belgian media has secured a copy of the entire file on DVD by now. But The Sprout is the only publication to actually print stuff as explicit and graphic as this from it.

The Sprout's website claims it is doing this to expose the fact that Julie and Melissa, two of the children murdered in this case, did not die of starvation while their kidnapper was in jail as Dutroux claimed, but of torture and abuse.

Personally, I think they could have made that claim without publishing the pictures. It would have been more respectful towards the parents, for one thing. Normally, I'm pretty much a free speech absolutist, and I still am. But that doesn't mean I have to approve of publishing just anything. I don't advocate using legal or other means to punish The Sprout for this, but in my eyes their reputation has taken a big hit. Shame on them!

2004-04-12T00:56:00.000+02:00

Mogadishu 2?

This article at Samizdata argues the point that Falujah is (against the expectations of the terrorists) no second Mogadishu. They are correct, in that it hasn't caused the U.S. to retreat, yet.

But in a military sense, it is even worse than Mogadishu for the Americans. Remember, back then over a thousand Aidid warriors were blown away compared to nineteen U.S. casualties. Right now there are already more dead marines and still 'only' hundreds of dead jihadis/baathists/terrorists/civilians.

The very fact that withdrawal is still not on the table means that the fabled 'U.S. aversity to casualties' isn't what it used to be...

2004-04-10T17:18:00.000+02:00

Experiment

There has to be a first for everything... As I write this post, I'm sitting on the toilet. Ain't WiFi great?

First review: kind of unconfortable, balancing a laptop on one knee and typing with the remaining hand...

UPDATE: No I won't post pictures...

2004-04-08T23:24:00.000+02:00

Investigation into Spread of a Meme

Just found this on Blogdex: The Memespread Project: Spread this Meme!. If you have a blog, go and hava a look...

2004-04-08T21:10:00.000+02:00

Wireless Post

Whey! I finally managed to get my home network extended with a wireless access point. If you can see this post it means I can now post from anywhere in the house...

Quite a bit of trouble it was, too: I bought a US Robotics Turbo Wireless Access Point and Router, unpacked it, plugged it in and... nothing! That's what showed up when my laptop scanned for access points, anyway. Connecting with an ethernet cable also yielded nothing: no IP address was given to my laptop by the built in DHCP server of the router.

Time to manually set an IP. I followed the instructions from the manual, set it up and then tried to connect to the web interface. Yay, it worked! But what was that? I just got a page prompting me to upload new firmware. Aargh!

Off to the USR website to get the latest firmware. Uploaded it to the router via the web interface. Bam! Router resets and is unreachable from then on. Restarting, unplugging, nothing works. Yes, resetting does, but then I just get the prompt to upload new firmware again...

Okay, time to bring this brick back to the store. At the store, no problem, we'll exchange it. But, uh oh, we're out of stock. We'll call you the moment we have your replacement.

Anyway, more than a week later the replacement arrived. After a lot of fiddling and tweaking with the settings and looking up stuff on the web I got it set up the way I want it: my LinkSys broadband router is connected to the ADSL modem, and the uplink is connected to one of the lan ports on the USR which is configured as an access point.

The result: the LinkSys does DHCP for wireless connections too, so all my machines are in the same IP range which means I can see my linux server and windows desktop as well from the laptop.

Anyway, from what I learned on the net in the mean time: don't buy the US Robotics Wireless Turbo Access Point and Router. The documentation sucks, firmware updates have been sparse and it seems a number of the shipped units have had serious problems.

2004-04-06T23:19:00.000+02:00

Poor Bastards

Just saw some images on CNN of some masked Al Sadr militiamen posing for the camera, waving their kalashnikovs, shaking their RPG grenades and showing off their machine guns.

All I could think of was 'poor bastards'. They reminded me of the famous scene in the Indiana Jones movie where a bad guy is about to attack the hero with a scimitar, but before doing so he waves it fiercely above his head.

Jones, of course, just shoots him.

Exactly what is going to happen to these guys, but instead of a simple handgun they will be facing this:

2004-04-05T23:17:00.000+02:00

Baghdad Webcam

Just found this webcam over at the Fox News site. It is a live view of Firduz square (remember, the one where Saddam's statue was toppled). Currently there is not much to see or hear as it is night and there is no audio track.

2004-04-05T21:19:00.000+02:00

Problem or Opportunity?

I've been thinking about the recent violence in Iraq, and it seems the people at Samizdata have too: A golden opportunity in Iraq | Samizdata.net. A bit short, perhaps, but I think I agree with their analysis.

I too think that Sadr has overplayed his hand: I think his 'uprising' of militia thugs will be short-lived, just like most of the thugs, come to think of it. By starting a shooting war he has given the coalition and Iraqi forces the perfect excuse to crack down on him, hard.

If he had just kept his activities to demonstrations and hateful sermons for a while and in the mean time kept growing his 'army' he could have been a force to be reckoned with after the official handover of power on July 30th. Maybe even be a serious contender in the elections, through intimidation and the threat of violence.

Any attempt to stop him could have been labeled surpression of free speech or acts of oppression. I must confess I even felt a tinge of sympathy for his cause when one of his newspapers was shut down by the Americans. I felt this was an act of hypocrisy, coming from these self-styled defenders of democracy and free speech. He could have exploited this to the max, and he would have had every right to.

But now... I guess he is about to learn the same lesson the Taliban learned some time ago: you can call Americans all sorts of names and call down the wrath of Allah on them and they won't budge or lift a finger towards you. But act on your word and attack them, and you will be stomped *flat*. With bombs. Real big ones. No match at all for Kalashnikovs and RPG's. Not at all...

2004-04-02T16:50:00.000+02:00

Streaming MP3 over SSH

Nifty... Right now I'm listening to some (legal) mp3 files streaming from my home server through SSH tunneling to my work desktop machine. Great way to circumvent the 'no mp3 files on your hard drive' policy here (streaming is allowed, though).

2004-04-02T16:48:00.000+02:00

New NATO Members

Well, it seems NATO has picked up a few extra members in Eastern Europe. One of the first consequences of this was that I was nearly late for work this morning. Stupid diplo-weenies in their fat BMW's with police escorts pushing regular traffic out of the way on the highway... Busloads of semi-important 'officials' jampacked in front of the NATO building. Hordes of press vans with parabolic dishes on top in the parking lot next to it. Oh, and cops, lots of them. And a police helicopter, angrily buzzing around in the sky.

2004-04-02T16:36:00.000+02:00

Light Bloggage

You might have noticed the decrease in blogging the past few days: I've been really busy at home and at work, to prepare some major projects and anticipating the birth of the first child of my wife and I. Yup, it's been boring meeting and furniture-rearranging time... Crunching technical documents and taking extra-good care of my wife... Trying to survive PowerPoint poisoning and designing a postcard to send out when the stork drops by... And all at the same time!

2004-03-31T14:25:00.000+02:00

Life Changing Moment

I have just found an article via blogdex that will change my life: Structured Procrastination. Basically it is a method for people like me who like to put everything off until the last moment to increase their productivity.

How? Simple really: mentally pick a few priority tasks that need to be done 'urgently'. At that moment, natural instinct kicks in and you start working on all kinds of other stuff to avoid having to start on the 'important' tasks. When you really can't delay the priority tasks any longer, pick some other priority tasks to focus on. And instead of doing them, you take on the stuff that is now no longer your priority. Bam! Instant productivity increase...

2004-03-30T00:52:00.000+02:00

Shocker! Well, Maybe Not...

Jurgen Verstrepen, self-declared bigmouth and 'independent' journalist will apparently run in the upcoming regional elections here in Belgium, for the far-right Flemish Bloc party. At least, that is what the media are saying. On his blog he says he will comment tomorrow.

Verstrepen was known mostly for his political talkshow 'Black or White' which ran on niche tv channel Liberty TV (actually a channel about travel). He brought in most of their ratings, among other things for frequently inviting Flemish Bloc politicians to debates on his show (something 'not done' by official state media and most politically influenced 'private' media). A few weeks ago his show was mysteriously cancelled and Verstrepen claimed political machinations behind it. From other sources I heard it was a commercial conflict, though, and still other people claim Verstrepen is just an arrogant *ssh*le.

Whatever the truth may be, I know one thing: Skynetblogs will get a lot of extra hits thanks to this!

2004-03-25T22:34:00.000+01:00

Antwerp VISA Scandal, Continued

Heard on the radio today that only one member of the Antwerp city council will be sent to court over alleged fraud with city VISA-cards. This despite the fact that all of them resigned (and were re-appointed, can you imagine that?) when it turned out they liberally used these cards for gifts, clothing and fancy dinners. Apparently the justice system seems to think nothing really illegal happened, because there were no clear guidelines on how to use these cards. By now, the system of city credit cards has been abandoned, by the way, and replaced with the old system of bringing in receipts in order to use an expense account (which, for them, has the advantage of being much less traceable, but let's not read too much into it).

Only Chantal Pauwels from the Green party is being charged with fraud, because somehow the same dinner got charged to the city twice: once on her card and once as a regular expense. She claims it was an administrative error and that she is not to blame (so she also stays in her job, with the explicit OK from the mayor).

One might wonder if people who see nothing wrong with using city money for personal expenses are really qualified to run a city. One might also wonder what explanation they will come up with when the extreme right Flemish Block party whips their behinds in the next elections. I guess they will blame it on 'intolerance' or 'racism'. I blame it squarely on their own shortsighted corruption and lack of personal responsability.

2004-03-25T22:25:00.000+01:00

Antwerp News Flash

A reader mailed me to say he had heard at 10.30 today from a friend in the Belgian police (Specian Intervention Squad) that a Kalashnikov and 40 kilograms of explosives had been found in a mosque in Antwerp this morning.

I don't know if this report is accurate or not, but my reader claimed he was 100% certain of his source. He also wondered when the media would pick up on the story (I just checked the Belga news agency wires, nothing yet).

More as I hear about it... (or maybe if)

2004-03-24T16:01:00.000+01:00

Hidden Message

I have hidden my last message until further notice. It will come back in a few hours/days. More news later.

2004-03-22T16:17:00.000+01:00

RIP Yassin

It seems those evil Israeli's again killed a nice, harmless spiritual leader of a movement of nice, harmless, oppressed people. At least if you believed Belgian state radio. They went on for minutes about how this old, handicapped man was just the spiritual leader of Hamas, how he was liked, nay worshipped by the Palestinians, and how dumb this new Israeli move was because it would ruin the peace-process. Not a word about what Hamas really was about: blowing up civilians on busses, shooting kids in their beds, murdering women and children...

Only at the end did they tack on a reference to Hamas terrorism: they said Yassin didn't seem to have a clear short-term strategy. 'Nobody really knew what the point of all these Hamas attacks really was was.' Actual quote, I'm not making this up.

All the while I kept thinking, will they react in the same way when the U.S. Air Force drops a couple of 2000 pound bombs on Osama Bin Laden? Will they headline: "Al Quaeda Spiritual Leader Murdered"? Will they go on and on about how he was worshipped by many Arabs? And how dumb Bush really was for ordering the strike? Because it will only cause more terror, in the long run?

The sad thing is, they probably will...

2004-03-20T16:07:00.000+01:00

Try-out Weekend

This summer I'll be working on the website of Krinkel2004, a gigantic youth-movement summer camp. Right now I'm at a preparation weekend for people who are going to organize the camp, together with three other guys who are going to update the website during the camp. We're trying to regularily update the current site, www.krinkel2004.be, so we can practice and try out some stuff. Have a look, maybe you'll even glimpse us on the webcam.

Althoug the chance is small: we have four laptops, a wireless router and a singled, shared phone line through which we all have to reach the internet. And the webcam also has to go over it. Man... it's just like the bad old days :-)

2004-03-17T11:25:00.000+01:00

Cool! RSS Torrents...

Check this out: Wired News: Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool. Basically, a guy has a demo up combining RSS (easy content syndication) and bittorrent (distributed filesharing application).
This means that you might conceivably subscribe to channels that have your favourite content (and we're talking audio, video and software here, not just text and pictures), which would then be automatically downloaded to your machine via bittorrent. The nifty thing is, because you don't need any hunge server farm to spread a file via bittorrent as it is a distributed peer to peer system, this might be a great tool for individuals to spread content on the net basically on the cheap or for free. Might this be the kickstart the videoblogging movement needs?
On the other hand: what about download limits imposed by broadband providers? I can imagine people being hesitant about sharing their bandwidth with strangers. But then again, that hasn't stopped kazaa, bittorrent and other e-donkeys in the past. And I have a feeling consumer bandwith availability is only going to increase in the future...

2004-03-16T14:47:00.000+01:00

Madrid & Stuff

I've been away from blogging a few days, but I've been thinking a lot about the Madrid bombing and its consequences. No matter how you turn it, Aznar wanted to keep Spanish troops in Iraq and the terrorists didn't: so they blew up a Spanish train and now the new socialist government is pulling them out. That makes me very scared!

Not so much that a socialist would do such a thing (that was to be expected, he promised it during his campaign) but that voters would let themselves be swayed in such a spectacular fashion by sheer terrorism. But maybe that wasn't the real reason they switched. Maybe it was just that Aznar couldn't help blaming ETA at first, hoping to score a few extra points, and that he stuck to that explanation even when contradictory evidence started mounting.

Anyway, 200 dead and the socialists won the election. Let's hope nobody tells our socialist party (who are lagging behind in the polls too) about this. Only a few months time left before we have (regional and European) elections in Belgium...

2004-03-16T14:39:00.000+01:00

Ralph Inbar, Dead at 65

I just read that Ralph Inbar has passed away. For those of you who don't know who he was: Ralph Inbar was a Dutch TV maker who became very famous in the Netherlands and Belgium with his candid-camera work about twenty or thirty years ago, introducing the genre in the Dutch-speaking television landscape.
Even today, people who end up in absurd situations in the Netherlands will still say sometimes: "and now Ralph Inbar will step out of the closet, right?"
He will be missed...

2004-03-11T13:48:00.000+01:00

Blast in Madrid: Whodunnit?

Today's explosions in Madrid were immediately blamed on the Basque separatist terror group ETA, under the often correct assumption: explosion in Spain = ETA attack.

Yet some interesting questions arise:

ETA has in the past mainly targetted politicians and police/army personel. These attacks were against civilians.

ETA often warned before major attacks. This time, nothing.

ETA attacks have been in decline the past few years, with many in the leadership being arrested. This is completely against that trend.

ETA almost always claims 'credit' shortly after the attacks it perpetrates. This time, nothing.

On the other hand, various Islamist terror organisations:

Target mainly civilians.

Tend to coordinate multiple attacks for bigger effect.

Don't always claim credit, or only do so a long time after the attacks (via grainy Al-Jazeera videotape or audio recording).

Then again:

In the past weeks and months, various explosives shipments and planned attacks by ETA were stopped by Spanish authorities.

ETA has tended to step up the violence in the run-up to general elections in the past.

There have been news reports about radicals gaining more power in the ETA leadership recently.

So this leaves us with four possibilities:

It was ETA, but with a new tactic.

It was an ETA faction, operating outside the group and with a new modus operandi.

It were Islamist terrorists bent on revenge after Spain stood with the U.S.A. in Iraq.

It was some other group entirely.

Me, I think two and three are the most likely. But in the coming days and hours more information will undoubtedly turn up and clear things up a bit.

2004-03-10T01:11:00.000+01:00

98 Days...

That's how long two sisters have been stuck in a diplomatic limbo already (the article is from when the affair began).

The two, Yasmine (15) and Sara (7) Pourhashemi, have been kidnapped by their Iranian father to Iran. The mother, Zahra, is living in Belgium. More than three months ago, the girls managed to escape from the village they were being held and got into the Belgian embassy.

According to Iranian law, they have the Iranian nationality because their father has, and so the Iranians won't let them leave the country. But the Belgian embassy also doesn't want them to go back to Iran, because they are behind the mother.

The standoff has been going on for 98 days, I read today in Gazet van Antwerpen, a Belgian newspaper (online version of the article not available). They reprinted a part of Yasmine's diary. It really got to me. Can you imagine what it is to be a 15 year old girl, stuck in a Belgian embassy, with no friends your own age, and no perspective of going to your mother anytime soon?

I wish we could do something for her. If you are in Iran, please go to the Belgian embassy and show her there are people on the outside who care. Get her a nice gift or something. It doesn't have to be expensive... Here is the address:

Avenue Shadid Fayazi 155-157
Shemiran - Elahieh
16778 Teheran

If you're outside Iran, here is a mailing address for the Belgian embassy:

P.O. Box 11365 - 115 Teheran

If you want to send a message to the embassy that they can forward to her and her sister, here is their e-mail...

2004-03-09T21:18:00.000+01:00

Belgian State Radio...

While being stuck in traffic today I heard on the news that Iraq finally has an interim constitution. And that this is somehow bad news. Bad news? Yes, that's how it sounded on Belgian state radio anyway...

First of all, they mentioned that there was no response from Iraqi's, no parties, no celebrations... They made it sound like no Iraqi cared at all. Well, they must have missed this one, this one or this one.

Secondly, they mentioned that the surrounding Arab countries were only moderately enthusiastic about it. But they didn't mention why! If I was an authoritarian ruler, I'd get nervous if my neighbours started going democratic. If I was an Islamist woman-represser, I'd get nervous if the folks next door started to let their women vote (and even put equality of the sexes in their constitution). If I were repressing minorities, I'd get nervous if right next door there would be a federal state where those minorities suddenly enjoy rights.

Thirdly, they commented that Bush's new vision for the Middle East had leaked, and that his plans for more democracy and equality for women weren't very popular there. With the rulers and the mullahs I guess... but they didn't mention this at all!

Just your daily portion of Iraqi doom and gloom... paid for by me.

2004-03-06T00:41:00.000+01:00

Linksys Problems Again...

Skip this post if you are not a geek. It won't interest you one bit... I warned you!

I've been having some trouble with my Linksys router and my laptop in the past months. I have an Acer Travelmate 242LC which I use to surf, blog etc. from the couch. To read my e-mail however, I contact my linux server upstairs via VNC (a free tool which lets you use a remote computer's desktop).

The problem was that while VNC worked, it would hang after five or ten minutes. Usually this happened every time the cooling fan of the laptop switched on. I don't know why, but for some reason my network connection goes down for a fraction of a second and then comes back. The only application that seemed to have problems with this was VNC. Downloads, surfing, SSH sessions, streaming music or video all seemed to work just fine.

Then I thought: what if I connect via SSH to the machine upstairs, and just tunnel the VNC connection through it? Maybe it will be more forgiving then, since VNC then thinks it is connected to a local port. So I tried it, and it seemed to work. But then I started to get freaky error messages and disconnects from SSH as well, stuff about checksums on packets not being quite right or about 'MAC errors' and whatnot.

So then I did what every geek would do: I hit google. Turns out these errors were probably being caused by the Linksys router's firmware, which didn't like SSH very much. But newer versions of the firmware were available, so I installed the latest one. Victory! The connection worked... But what was that?

All my settings in the router were gone! My PPPoE settings... my port forwarding settings... all gone! I ended up having to go online over the phone line with my laptop in order to retrieve the right settings from my provider's website. So I was on-line again... I quickly restored port forwarding so that inbound HTTP requests went to the webserver again, and SSH sessions could come in from the outside world.

Alas! When I tried to log in to my home machine from work, nothing but 'server not found' messages! Arrgh! Now what? I just found out: by default the router only makes a PPPoE connection when an internal machine requests something from the web, and disconnects after five minutes of idle time! Stupid, stupid, stupid! But fixed now...

Still reading this? Then you must be a real geek! Go here and treat yourself!

2004-03-06T00:26:00.000+01:00

Just Like on TV...

I just came back from a meeting in Antwerp (it had to do with a youth-movement I'm a member of called Chiro, somewhat like the boy-scouts but different). Anyhow...

Halfway the meeting somebody enters the meeting room, says he's from the police and that if anybody needs to leave, just look for him because one of their cars is blocking the entrance. We all looked at each other in surprise. What was going on? But the person chairing the meeting was quick to explain why the cops were in the building. It was a stake-out!

Apparently burglars had stolen a lot of stuff from a building site across the street in the past few days. And today a large shipment of electrical appliances had been delivered there to be installed. The cops suspected the burglars might strike again, so they set up an observation post...

After the meeting I had a quick chat with the cop on duty: apparently the building had been burglared 26 times already! But that was not the worst case he had known: another building in town was at 54 burglaries already! Talk about having some nerve!

And people wonder why the extreme right law-and-order party Flemish Bloc gets so many votes in Antwerp...

2004-03-04T10:59:00.000+01:00

Art... What is It?

Just found a hilarious video clip at enzine.cyborgcow.net:
Art.... It is some student with a video camera and some editing software who made a brilliant parody of an art-pundit interviewing an art-expert about art.

2004-03-03T14:29:00.000+01:00

Historic?

I just came back from lunch with Loïc Le Meur of U-Blog fame, and after talking with him I feel even stronger that we live in historic times as far as blogging is concerned. Interesting stuff is about to happen, real soon now!

2004-03-03T00:12:00.000+01:00

Too Funny

For an illustrative example of what happens when you use Google image search to find pictures for your newspaper, go here: SAS joins fresh bid to snare bin Laden - PakTribune. Look at the picture and tell me why they didn't see straight away that this was a PhotoShop...
(thanks to dof)

2004-03-02T15:55:00.000+01:00

Great News for Bloggers!

CNN.com - Study: Very few bloggers on Net - Mar. 1, 2004.

Do you know what this means? The current blog explosion is only the beginning! Imagine InstaPundit, but ten times bigger: it can happen... poor Glenn!

Think about his bandwidth bill!

2004-03-01T16:10:00.000+01:00

Another One Wakes Up

After dof, now the blog of Flex Flint has come alive again! Yay, springtime in Belgian bloggerland ;-)

2004-03-01T12:23:00.000+01:00

About Time...

Eight years after he was arrested, the trial of Marc Dutroux is finally starting today. Dutroux (and some accomplices) are accused of kidnapping, raping and killing a number of children.

The case file against them is over 400.000 pages long and has been put together during one of the most mediatized and dramatic police investigations ever in Belgium. Unreliable witnesses, allegations of political cover-ups, incompetent investigators and even an escape attempt that went on for several hours and led to the dismissal of two ministers... we've seen it all in this case.

Now I'm no fan of the death penalty, but I'm sure that in the U.S.A. Dutroux would have been 'fried', shot, injected or hanged about six or seven years ago, or at least convicted and awaiting execution. And even if the trial had taken place in a state that didn't have the death penalty, he would be serving his sentence anyway, after receiving a speedy and fair trial.

Why we can't have this in Belgium is beyond me, but I'm seriously wondering about it as I watch the rising costs of the whole circus unfolding further and further.

2004-02-27T13:22:00.000+01:00

TypePad test

Don't ask how, but I got a TypePad demo account. For those of you who don't know, TypePad is a web-based blogging tool based on Moveable Type. You can follow my experiments over at "the other Live from Brussels".

2004-02-27T13:12:00.000+01:00

Snowed Under

Due to heavy snowfall half of Belgium (including me) hasn't been able to get to work today. This morning it took me twenty minutes to get to the on-ramp of the highway (normally two), but once there I turned back as cars were coming back down from the on-ramp against the traffic direction, while a large truck was fruitlessly trying to get to the top of the ramp.
According to the radio, there have been 1.100 km of traffic jams this morning!
I just attempted for a second time to get to work: I was able to get on the highway this time, but it took me half an hour to get to the next exit (normally five minutes and never a traffic jam). So I turned around and it looks like I'll work from home for the rest of the day too.
If you want to Skype me... I'll probably be online for a looooong time today.

2004-02-26T16:51:00.000+01:00

More Skype Goodness

Skype is an ICQ or AIM-like application that allows you to make free voice calls to other Skype users with your computer. Now that in itself is pretty neat, but check out what they just announced on their website:

February 23, 2004 – Skype launches free conference calling

Go there, download it and call me tonight... Let's have a Brusselsblog Skype party ;-) My Skype username is 'schenkm', and I will be online from around 20.00 CET until well after midnight CET. I propose 23.00 CET as the best time to try and get a conference call going. That's 17.00 Eastern Time, for my transatlantic readers.

2004-02-26T16:23:00.000+01:00

Pretty Cool Hack

Here's a nifty web application I just discovered: Mind World Map. It is a collaborative effort aimed at creating a map of the world by letting visitors of the site decide if a random pixel on it should be land or sea. You can even watch an animation of how they got to the current result. Mindboggling!

2004-02-25T16:13:00.000+01:00

A Little Experiment

At my work I have been asked to participate in revamping the Skynet Marketing Center: the website of our marketing department where they sell advertising for our portal site skynet.be. I just learned the amount of traffic the Skynet Marketing Center was getting, and I thought to myself, I bet I can make a noticeable spike in that just by linking to it on my blog. So if you please could click on this link for me, just once? Here it is, once more: Skynet Marketing Center.

2004-02-24T14:49:00.000+01:00

Look Who's Back

Looks like the hibernation period of the Dog of Flanders blog is finally over! Lots of new yummy anti-idiotarian and anti-indymediotarian goodness over there!

2004-02-24T13:53:00.000+01:00

Everything For Free!

Steve "Stunt" Stevaert, president of the Flemish Socialist party, is at it again. Steve has made his reputation by making public transportation 'free' in his home town of Hasselt when he was mayor there ('free' as in 'taxpayer funded'). Since then he has regularily made 'spectacular' announcements during his political rise to the top: abolishing the TV license (but still funding state televison with tax money), free this, free that... But the 'free' busses in Hasselt have always been his 'trademark' stunt.

So for the upcoming elections he has figured out a new stunt: he is going to organise free bus trips to the Netherlands, so that voters can see the 'disastrous' effects of christian-democrat social policies. Underfunded schools, waiting lists in hospitals, high rents... All this so he can continue his purple coalition government (purple is what you get when you mix the red of the socialists with the blue of the liberal party).

The only problem with this is that the Netherlands have only known a christian democrat government for the past nine months. Before that, guess who ruled for eight years? Indeed, a purple coalition! You can probably say a lot about Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende, but that he can turn a 'purple utopia' into a 'social wasteland' in nine months is probably a bit exaggerated.

Any Dutch readers care to comment?

2004-02-20T15:26:00.000+01:00

Come to Belgium, Get to Vote! (sort of)

Last night parliament passed a controversial law that gives foreigners in Belgium the right to vote in local elections. Much has been said about this, but if you look at the actual law I don't think there will be much impact.
What does the law say? Foreigners who live in Belgium legally can go to the local city hall and register to vote after declaring they will respect the Belgian law, constitution and human rights. After this they are obliged to vote in local elections, just like any other Belgian. And they can only vote: being candidate is not allowed.
I don't know if there are any sanctions for not respecting "Belgian law, constitution and human rights", but I doubt many foreigners will go to the trouble of registering to vote, except maybe a small group of very motivated ones. For the large majority, registering to vote will mean they can also be fined for not showing up at the voting booth. Why take that risk if you're not motivated or interested enough to go?
But anyway: for all you foreign readers of this site, if you have enough patience *you* can have your say in who is to be mayor of Brussels!

2004-02-19T00:13:00.000+01:00

Light Blogging

I haven't been blogging yesterday and probably won't blog much today either. The reason is I'm on a two day course about project management basics. After six months on the job I'm finally being trained on how to do it ;-)
In other news, while on the train this morning I added some new functions to my RandomTV blog javascript: it now is possible to report offensive or broken content, just like you can on the complete site. So next time you see porn in my sidebar, just hit that 'Offensive content?' link!

2004-02-17T16:49:00.000+01:00

Galloway Has Quite Some Gall...

A paragraph caught my eye in story in the Guardian about Iraqi oil money finding its way to (organisations of) politicians opposing the war via intermediate businessmen: Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Iraq oil cash funded MPs' campaigns:

"Mr Galloway said he was unaware that his financial sponsors were getting oil cash from the UN programme. But he accepts that he knew his supporters had links with Saddam's regime, and regarded that as an inevitable price to pay. "

At least he's honest about being a traitor or not minding to be one.