Spaanse overvallers

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Terwijl ik dit schrijf, ben ik nog onderweg naar het vakantiehuisje in L’escala. Het is bijna 10 uur, en een klein uurtje geleden hebben ze een poging gedaan ons te overvallen. Bij het buitenrijden van Barcelona voelden we opeens een slag van voor op de auto, en een auto die voor ons vertraagde. Een magere kerel met een bandana hing half uit de donkere wagen (een sportief model). De adrenaline schoot door mij, en de rest van de auto.

Meteen schoot het artikel van Het Nieuwsblad van vorige week door m’n gedachten. De dag, en de schrijver ben ik al vergeten, maar ik herinner me nog scherp wat er in stond. Spaanse bendes die stenen katapulteren naar nietsvermoedende toeristen, die denken dat ze iets geraakt hebben, stoppen, en dan overvallen worden. Meestal op de eerste stop met een mes door compagnons.

De marginale overvaller deed teken om te stoppen, terwijl hij nog altijd half uit de auto hing.

“Fuck You!”

Ik had het eerder al verteld tegen pa toen ik het las, en opnieuw ging het door me heen.

“Doorrijden! Niet stoppen!”

Redelijk duidelijk voor m’n pa, die zelf ook al ‘plancheerde’. De overvallers dropen al snel af toen ze merktten dat ze van ons niet veel konden plukken. Of toch dat we dat niet gingen toelaten.

Alvast bedankt aan de collega’s van de krant, voor het artikel. Het kon niet op een beter moment komen.

Een redelijk intense avond al bij al; en gelukkig totaal niks schade.

(ik had toch beter die kruisboog gekocht in Andorra. (of die Shotgun) :p.)

Steve Jobs, Visionary

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This morning I opened my newspaper download in a comfortable Starbucks couch, in the shadow of La Segrada Familia, Gaudi’s last masterpiece. A nice chocolate brownie, and a tall caramel cream Frappuchino. I wanted to press “Download”, and then I saw a picture of Steve Jobs under Breaking News. Above where the tiny letters “Steve Jobes resigns as Apple CEO”. Good thing I was in a very comfortable Happy Place, so my reaction was limited to:

“WHATTAFUCK?”

So as fast as I could I switched to the RSS feeds, and started reading. I sure chose the right moment to go ‘offline’ for a week it seems. After calming my nerves a bit after all the news, I started thinking. About The Rebel, the Misfit. The one that came up with the ideas that changed my digital life. The iMac, iPhone, iPad. A man who taught me to present in public. And made me less afraid of going off the beaten path, and fight through the jungle, and do it my way. Even if I ended up in the same place as the regular path, I feel a lot more satisfied doing it my way.

A man who turned his flaws in to his strengths. What will we do without the Keynotes
.. . Well … We’ll probably just watch the new ones. Even if Jobs won’t do it anymore. And that’s the point of my post. Apple will live on. I will keep using the products, and buy the new ones I like. I’ll still hate things they fuck up.

But by removing himself from the equation, Jobs insured that despite his health issues, the company will rise and shine brightly. And I for one, welcome our new Dear Leader overloard.

Steve, keep rocking!

Updates

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Oh right, I opened MarsEdit to start blogging a bit.

So, Blogging ..

Euhm. I worked last night to make the site even prettier. The homepage now has my latest Instagram shot (just as I imagined it should have in 2008.). No, really!

Memory lane:

screenshothomepage.png

It now also features Gowalla. The Find Me page has been updated with new icons, my portfolio has been corrected and updated, and I added a new design page with all designs made in the Student Life. Hm, I don’t know why I’m writing in English now. I think it has all to do with the way I’m thinking at the moment. Ah well.

Bugs!

Anyhow, there is a nasty bug in the header in Firefox 3.5 and lower. Should be okay if you use the regular updates.

In Safari there is a weird bug that the weather forecast is shifted to the right of the page.

In Internet Explorer 9, the skyline gradients don’t work yet. They should work in IE10, so I’m just giving up that legacy support. (+ The sky doesn’t look that bad without them it seems).

Anyhow,

Up next is the video page that needs a bit of work. But not a lot.

Cheers!

And we’re live! (New Site!)

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So the last 6 hours had some major breakthroughs. After working on a client site, I got the right inspiration I was looking for to finish the site. After an hour of designing, and messing with the header positioning, I am proud to show you the latest version of my site!

Content wise, everything is the same, but the entire site has been re-created from scratch, with a brand new design. Since all major bugs are out of the system, it was time to get it online, so I could start and do live testing. (Some unexpected things already occurred, and where fixed within minutes). So if you see weird things, let me know!

The reason I did launch now, was that I saw my site in on other browser, and saw how dated it looked. It just didn’t have the same thing anymore that it once did, so yeah, here is a new look ‘n feel!

Some things To Do:

  • Reinstall Gowalla on homepage
  • Look for Instagram embedding?
  • …

So yeah, it’s 4:12 AM now. It was a long and heavy pregnancy, and a tough birth, but here is a pretty new baby.

 

Goodnight, and enjoy!

Final Cut Pro X: First Thoughts

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So, as every hour in the last 3 weeks, I looked over the RSS feeds, ’till I saw the words I was hoping for. “Apple releases Final Cut Pro X”. Great! Since may 30th I’ve been sitting on footage that needed to be edited, and my poor old mac couldn’t handle the 1080p HDSLR footage.

I got a new mac, and reinstalled Final Cut Pro 7, until I realized the problem wasn’t solely my mac, it was FCP. It couldn’t handle more than 1 processor and 4 gig RAM.

So yeah. Of course I’m one of those usual early adapters, but in this case I had no choice. I needed a more powerful HD Editing system.

Enter Final Cut Pro X.

So the second I read Apple released it, and I got out of the meeting, I had 25 minutes to get to the bus stop for my next destination, and pass a store for iTunes credit. Worst part of that is, the walk to the bus stop was 18 minutes. If I waited, I had to spent all evening lusting over screenshots, and wait till the stores re-opened tomorrow morning. No F-in way.

So some running and 240 euro later, I had in my hands 6 iTunes Cards. A lot of money, but it’s an investment of course.

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After some code redeeming on my iPad, I sent the buy order through VLC on my iPad.

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When I finally got home, I booted the software, and got welcomed by this shiny screen:

Screen shot 2011-06-22 at 01.14.48.png

So enough backstory, here is what you all came for. How I experienced Final Cut Pro X.

First thoughts: iMovie XL.

Second thoughts: Oh, THERE is that button. And that button, and that slider.

See, FCP isn’t that different. It still does the same things, still uses the same shortcuts. In fact, when you know the shortcuts it’s very fast to work with.

One of the weirdest things is pressing Cmd+S as you used to do every 5 minutes, and have nothing happen. It has autosave, and the one time that it hung completely, and I had to force quit (I was searching for iTunes songs), it opened right where I left, no harm done. I can’t wait till Lion’s versioning.

I must say, It works very smooth, yet sometimes I feel it still isn’t completely fool proof. A small random hang at times, making it a bit less smooth. But that might just be me doing something wrong, because as you see, my system is great:

Screen shot 2011-06-22 at 01.35.47.png

(yes, 12 Gig Ram. No more problems having Aperture, FCP, Photoshop, Illustrator, iTunes and Firefox open at the same time and do some work). :P

Anyhow!

Let Downs:

  • Doesn’t import FCP 7 projects yet. It does import iMovie. Riiiiight. (to be added in next update)
  • No copy of light and effects to other clips.
  • No Multicam yet (to be added in next update)
  • Confusing way of color matching.
  • Not preview friendly versions of having effects, or a simple way to remove effects.
  • All FCP Events are listed in the project. So if you want private edits, you need to have those on removable media. + I wonder how fast that’ll work at a terra of footage in there.
  • Can’t no longer have a ‘whitespace’ and edit bit by bit.
  • Don’t see a way for easy multiple timelines. Or include full timelines in other projects.
  • Magnetic playhead isn’t always handy to select and go to the inspector.

Happy feelings:

  • Grand Central Dispatch. Works great with all 4 cores and available RAM.
  • Background Rendering. Also for export!
  • No more active 2nd screen. It now is an independent screen.
  • SPEED!
  • Magnetic Timeline
  • Lots of presets in color and audio editing
  • Free audio samples!
  • Rolling Shutter!
  • Quick video stabilization in the background!
  • Auto converting to prorez
  • All render files in 1 folder. Great for archiving. No more thousand folders of files.
  • Keywords. But that one’s a bitch if you need to go all over that for smaller projects. The auto analyzer is amazing though, but you better give it some time to do it’s job.
  • Quick uploading to YouTube!

That’s about it I can come up with in the first moments. All by all, I can’t wait for 10.1, which will surely come from Apple. I suggest that you’ll take the plunge, and get to know it, and build it in a new workflow, while finishing older projects, or re-starting them. (The restarting might not be the worst for small edits. I mean, I recreated a project from scratch that’s even better in about an hour.)

For now, it’ll rate it a B+, but I’m sure it’ll upgrade to A+++ soon enough, once Apple adds Multicam and importing older projects.

Composities

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Test Updates voor Theme Development. Daar is hier is een lijst van Composities:

Vocaal

Instrumentaal

  • Breath Of Life
  • Eurode Fantasia
  • Exange Of Toughts
  • Fantasie Voor Orkest
  • Four Pictures
  • Impressions
  • Quatre Miniatures (Four Miniatures)
  • Fantasie Op “Regina Caeli”
    		•

    Scotland, the final travel blog

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    At the moment that I am writing this, I’m sitting behind my desk at home. When we got to the Anstruther harbour, we hopped on the ferry and slowly set sail for The Isle Of May. When landing on the pier, we immediately split of from the main group, and headed in the opposite direction. This paid off, as within 10 minutes we got to 1.5 meter from a group of puffins, which made for some great pictures.

    We saw Puffins, and a LOT of other birds, seals, and rabbits! More pictures will come soon, as soon as I process and geotag everything. I also shot video, so that one shall be edited and uploaded too in due time.

    After a 2.5 hour journey on the island, it was time to head back to the airport with Nettle. Thanks again to Michael and Katherine for the hospitality, and driving me around with Nettle

    I will post more detailed posts in the near future, so more to come!

    But for now let me tell you, I miss you Scotland, despite the soggy chips!

    Tuesday day

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    So at 11 am our vagabonding friends arrived in Bridge Of Weir, and off we drove to the east coast. After a 2 hour drive in Nettle, our epic motorhome, we arrived at the camping place.

    After a nice walk to the pub and having some good food, it was time for a nice long walk next to the beach. The weather’s great for April, but the wind still is cold.

    When we got back “home”, we watched some of the new Sherlock BBC Series.

    Now bed, as the puffins await us!

    The iPad role in traveling

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    So I have an iPad, everyone knows that by now. No, not the 2, my original works fine enough thankyouverymuch.

    By NF

    If I compare my travels from 2 years ago in Ireland to this week in Schotland, I see very different things. When I was traveling Ireland took my MacBook with me, and used that to daily capture my 8 gig of pictures of the day (or more). Also I wrote blogposts just as now, and edited some pictures.

    At 4 moments in 2 weeks I found free or unprotected wifi to upload these posts and pictures, and that was it. Also it was rather heavy to have a camera, laptop, etc with me. With no entertainment on it at all (I needed all space for my pictures). In fact, it went that far that I actually had to erase all apps I no longer was using on the trip, and erase large un-used files. In the end I got home with over 200 GB of pictures. In a cleaning spree later on I deleted all except the ones I really liked.

    But I evolved, and in the 4 past days, I still have all shots on my camera, and I have gathered a lot less pictures. Less than 300 shots that I would consider as a keeper, where a lot of those are actually portraits and party shots.

    And just like that, the iPad is an evolution, and a best companion. I now carry my iPad and a 70-200 2.8 lens, and it still feels lighter than my backpack back then.

    Also New, is constant connectivity. My iPad has a 3G connection, and with the prepaid 1gig Three iPad MicroSim Cards I have a rather good connection in the cities while visiting. Also, the GPS is great for locating myself, and with The Cartographer I can cache google maps and use GPS tracking to find my spots for when I enter a no-coverage zone. (and save new spots for future geotagging of my pictures, or nice places and such.)

    The Cartographer for now, is an iPhone app, but it does work on the iPad too, and an iPad version will be coming soon!

    The iPad is also great to blog, edit your key-shots, and send em off online. Over WiFi or 3G. (and GPS navigation), and of course, stay up to date with RSS and email. And stuff like that. Or play games. All with that 10 hour battery.

    All by all it’s an amazing device, giving me the right mixture of work, entertainment, and is the perfect travel companion.

    Tuesday Morning

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    Waking up at 8AM, and not be tired … It stays a weird experience. I think it’s my body’s reaction to the hour differences, and the “still not being able to function”-thingie from Daylight Savings Time.

    So it’s 9Am and after a nice refreshing shower, it’s time to put on De Zwaarste Podcast van StuBru, and wake up properly with tea, some toasties, and birdwatching.

    Also, I want to share 2 pictures with you I edited on the iPad. These are not my final masters, but rather JPG imports from the RAW files.

    See you soon!

    20110426-091336.jpg

    20110426-091348.jpg

    Monday adventures

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    So Monday! When I woke up, I got some bad news. Our host Fee was too exhausted to do a 4 hour drive to the Isle Of May. So I felt horrible for a while. After all, the puffin-island was to be the highlight of an amazing weekend.

    However, Mike & Kath to the rescue! My traveling Australian development friends from A Tasty Pixel whom I was supposed to meet up tomorrow are actually also in the Market for some Puffin Searching, so they are picking me up tomorrow, and we will visit the island on Wednesday before I fly out to Belgium again.

    Because, After actually seeing my friends again, it was time to see Scotland for the first time. After just couch hanging till 6 pm we decided to have some food, and after that, we went to visit the places I really wanted to visit! After some google street view stalking some months ago, it was time to find those places in real life. Thank you The Cartographer!

    So after Fee showed us around Scotland, and we hit up the place, we came to this gorgeous nature park called Muirshiel. After some fence hopping past sunset, we shot some awesome pictures past sunset.

    More to come later!

    So time to load some YouTube videos on the AppleTV and laugh with the ever awesome Eddy Izzard, or other YouTube love.

    Sunday!

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    so we had a night walk across some dark fields, whichinter fun! After getting back home and playing with my appleTV yesterday evening, and Gav streaming The Evil Dead Movie to the TV I fell asleep during the movie. I woke up during the last scene, and went to bed.

    Waking up early sunday morning, it’s always a strange feeling, even if it was a tad early. After some toasties with my own sliced cheese, I came up with the brilliant idea to go on a bike trip to a road 12 km away.

    One hour and 3 km biking, I decided to get back, cause I kept riding the wrong mountains. I did get some nice shots of the Scottish landscape.

    After recovering from that we got some fish & chips at Paul’s. So it seems vinegar is actually doable on fries, but they are extremely soggy, and not that wow. :p I miss my Belgian food! (however the vegetarian Shepperd’s Pie was nice!)

    Then we went to Glen, which was a park/playthingie. Some face licking and epic pix and vids ensued. More I will not reveal. Time for a Sunday evening! Let’s hope there still will be tickets available for the ferry, as the ticket guys did not reply at all.