A Dutchman in Belgium

I am in this coaching and workshop thing. It's a project to start my own business in a safe and cosy environment without the risks involved. It's a way to see if my concept is working or not without falling on my face. I am eager and enthusiastic about what I do. I feel always very vibrant and lively and see many oppertunities. I am curious and want to learn, also from the experiences of others. But I feel that many times somekind of resistance is coming from people. Based on the language I use and the way I speak and communicate. I hear to many times this is typical Dutch, are you sure to do business in Belgium? You are such a typical sales person. Dutch are this and Belgiums are that. The tendency of labeling is sometimes in my opinion stronger then before. I have to admit, I feel really tired of it. It makes me feel I am to smart and the rest is to retarded what of course is total bullshit. I have my weaknesses as well and I am far from best or better human being. Is my enthusiasm also my trap?

Sometimes I feel living in Belgium is almost like living in the dark ages. Painfully people tend to point at the differences and the impossibilities coming from that. I start to walk on eggs and I feel that I better shut up and hold back. From this point of view it looks like nothing is going forward anymore, even worse things go backward. There is no open mind towards refreshing different views. Even though Flemish is close to Dutch there is to much differences in nuance. Maybe I should really focus on the Dutch market and forget about Belgium. To them I am the smooth talker, the salesman. They have difficulties to look beyond that point. I am much more then that. It gives a feeling of complete solitude, something that I sometimes like but not always. I think of burning bridges and ships. But what options do I have? I don't want to go back to Holland, a country that in my opinion drastically changed into a extreme society with extreme views, fear and anxiety rule. Extreme populist politicians rule without taking full responsibility. Jeez what became of this idiot world. I feel really tired.....

Micmacs à tire-larigot

Last year in autumn I went to the cinema in Antwerp. While people were piling up in front of another entrance, some stupid sequel about hot cars and hot girls, I found myself in a total empty room. I never experienced this, especially in the Metropolis of Antwerp.

The movie another little treasure of Jean-Pierre Jeunet is about an average person working in a video rental. His youth started cruel with the loss of his father who died as a mine sweeper in a bomb squad. Some stuff from his dad was sent back home, including a piece of shrapnel. The image of this piece with the name of the factory was burned in his mind. Many years later he sits in the video store and one day there is some noise outside of the store. He walks to the door to look what is going on. Standing in the door a strange situation is unfolding in front of him. Two rival gangs are having a shoot out, complete with car and motorcycle chasing. One bullet misses the target and hits Bazil (the video store guy) in the head.

This is where the story starts. After operation, actually a non-operation, he ends up loosing his job, loosing his home and on top of that finding his personal stuff scattered in the neighborhood. Back at the store arguing with his former boss the girls that tooks his place hand him over the hull from the bullet that hit him. He keeps it as a souvenir. Bazil is not the depressive kind, though he doesn't speak much during the movie. He get's on the way and first starts making some money. He has an absolute talent in synchronized speech of movies. In the metro system of Paris he makes money by singing synchronized to a girl that stand behind a column.

One day he meets an old jailbird, who has little threatening talks but in heart is a true and lovely person, he takes Bazil to his home, a pile of garbage. But looks can deceive the pile of garbage is nothing more then a camouflage for their home. His new job is gathering metal scrap and things people throw away. Quickly adapting to his new situation he finds him one day on the way on a big boulevard. And suddenly he is like struck by lightning. Across the street he recognizes the sign with the name of the factory who created the mine that killed his death. But surprised exactly on the other side of the road is the factory who created the bullet that almost killed him. He chooses the direct approach and enters the factory that killed his dad. He doesn't get far. Thrown out at the street, a plan unfolds in his mind, it is time for revenge.

Micmacs is a typical Jeunet movie. It is not hard to recognize his hand. When you watched Delicatessen and Amelie, you instantly know it's him. That was also what the critics wrote. I personally think that it's a brilliant movie. I love his art of film making. I think people these days are to much spoiled with the mega billion dollar movies from Hollywood. Micmacs is a small story about small people. Victims of the big money and big companies. And they take their revenge with their means. It is dark comedy at it's finest, not so dark as Delicatessen but dark enough for me. I would say it is also much more art, because the effort Jeunet takes in the details. Every shot in the movie is like a small piece of art, rich in detail, color and light.

A must see movie for fans of this genre!

Ich habe Sie geliebt.

Goodbye?

It hurts. She told me today she doesn't love me anymore. She said: "you are my soulmate, you are like family, I care for you". But she doesn't love me anymore, not the way it should normally be between a couple. We cried, we talked, we tried to grasp the feeling. She asked me to lay down in bed with my macbook. The ritual of laying in bed and chatting. I am so afraid of loosing the chat. That it could be the last image ever of her. I feel complicated by this ordeal. Why is it that women think I am the greatest guy, passionate, lovely, caring, a good cook, adventurous, creative, smart, humorous, romantic etc. But they seem always to look for something else. The superficials, the mean types, the muscles, the macho's. All the guys that seem to like to think of a woman as a chick, and only see them as a body and not a person. I wish I could be just like those assholes. But I can't. I know after this breakup I won't be in favor of a relation anymore. I can't do it anymore. Investing myself again, being accepted again, going thru the whole thing of building, investing and compromising.

I feel sleepy, but I am afraid to fall asleep. She has her eyes closed, lays on her bed with her angel like face. I look at her. Tears in my eyes. They already hurt so much from the pain and the cries the last hours. Before she laid down, she put on some music. Music that I played in the past for her. I feel you, les Djins, Coldpay, more songs. She dances in her red panty in front of the cam. Her typical dance, that is so her. It makes me always laugh and happy. Not this time. Now I can only think what I loose, how to proceed without her. Some say that no woman is worth the pain, but I can't help it. It's how I feel, I love her, every fiber of her. The little mole on her left ear. The 4 dimples when she laughs out loud. The strange birthmark on her back above her buttocks. The shape of her long fingers that so gracefully play the guitar. Her hairless armpits that I am always so obsessed with. The bridge of her nose, that I like to call my spot. Her beautiful full lips that can make so much noise when she is eating satisfied one of my dishes. Her legs, ah those legs. And my fascination for her pubic hair. So many things about her body that I know in detail.

She turns on the bed and some mumbling noise escapes from her mouth. It looks like she looks at me, but I don't see her really reacting to my staring. I lay down a bit more. My burning eyes frozen on the screen. I dose of a bit. Sometimes I scare awake, still checking for the image. If the chat is still open. Then suddenly it happens, the chat screen freezes. The last image of her on my desktop. Will I ever see her again......

Great Obama video

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

Reverse Graffiti

Alexandre Orion a reverse graffiti environmental activist.

A few years ago he adorned a transport tunnel in Sao Paolo with a mural consisting of a series of skulls to remind drivers of the detrimental impact their emissions have on the planet. The Brazilian authorities were incensed but couldn't actually charge him with anything so they instead cleaned the tunnel. At first they cleaned only the parts Alexandre had cleared but after the artist switched to the opposite wall they had to clean that too. In the end, the authorities decided to wash every tunnel in the city.

Doel, a dying village

Doel, that's the name. A small village near Antwerpen. A village that is dying after legislators almost 30 years ago decided that the harbor had to expand and the village had to make place. Nowadays the village is crammed between a nuclear plant and the piled up containers of Antwerpen harbor, only a few houses are still occupied. But soon also these last families that resist to leave will be forced out. The first houses went already down. I paid Doel a visit on one evening, to witness how a dying village looks like. The earie and strange sensation that I felt I put in my pictures. It's a great experience and one of a kind. Here are some examples.......

It's stange to see what people leave behind, like cars and kids toys.

Gaz used to be 92 eurocents and Diesel 70 (prices still in Belgian Franks)

The last household shop, run by an old lady. Quite messy place.

My living room taken with the Sigma 17-70 mm at 17 mm focal length

My living room again but this time with the 10-20 mm Sigma with 10 mm focal length.

rediscovery of photography

For some years now I am into photography. Though I love old film and camera's I am despite of my age in favour of progression. That's why I like digital camera's much more. The computer is my darkroom, and the digital camera my tool for getting the images. In 2003 I bought the 8 megapixel DSC F828 from Sony, before that I used the F505 since 99. The F505 was housing 3.2 megapixels. Before the F505 I used a Kodak, one of the first camera's. Now you could compare the resolution of the Kodak to an ordinairy webcam today. In between I bought an EOS 30 analog camera that made me familair with Canon. I used it a lot on my trips to Romania, and still have hundreds of pictures stuffed in a drawer. Still wishing to buy myself a film scanner. Anyway, this month I found the oppertunity to invest in a Canon 40D. Why the Canon? Because first of all, I still had a very good 28-300 AF Sigma lens that would be fitting the new camera. Secondly I am kind of fond of Canon. I don't feel much attraction to other brands. Why the 40D? Because I simply wanted a camera that had some good features and though it may sound weird, I have a weakness for big clumsy heavy camera's. They feel more balanced. There is totally nothing wrong about the 400D and 450D and I think they really trigger creativity and playfull picturing, but it's just not my cup of tea. For me the EOS 30 was already a good feeling big camera. The 40D is even bigger and heavier, with a Sigma lens it weights about 1,8 kg. 

Anyway I spent my money on this camera, and the first days were really adventurous. Most stuff is found very quickly, but it's more the hidden features and custom possibilities that I like to figure out. The 28-300 mm from Sigma mentioned before was doing a fine job, but because the 40D is not a fullframe DSLR or like others call it a cropping camera, I have to multiply the focuspoint with 1.6. Though this is not directly visible in the viewfinder, it becomes clear in the end result. For some reason the viewfinder crops the image a lot, and the endresult shows always more picture information. 

So I decided to buy a special Digital lens from Sigma. My choice for Sigma is simple; the lenses are good, solid build with metal and mucho cheaper then Canon. I wish I had the money to spent on original lenses, but it's fairly not possible to find good Canon lenses for good money. My first lens that I bought was the Sigma Macro 17-70 mm. This would give me back some wide angle that I lost with the 28 multiplied with 1.6. The lens is a great lens for multiple usage. Wether it's portraits or landscape, architectural or anything else that comes to mind, it perfomance very well. Especially portrait with a low depth of field is a great feature of this lens. It's also very compact and maybe not as quickly responding with the Auto Focus as an USM or HSM driven lens but I won't complain.

My second lens that I bought is the 10-20 mm from Sigma, this time in HSM. It's the first time that I ever bought this kind of wide angle lens. With 102 degrees at 10 mm it's more then I expected. It's nice to read the catalog or other comments, but finally using this lens convinced me totally to have this little darling. So far so good, I will post some pics to show the benefits. What else is very appealing to me is the 1600 or even the 3200 iso of the Canon. I was never able to make pictures in poor light conditions with almost no noise. The Sony would already give up at anthing more then 400 ISO. My end conclusion is that I feel very inspired and I have the feeling I can move on for the next 5 years or more. This baby is going to stay for a while.

Amazing Kate

it's hard to resist you I love your talents and beauty. You truly inspire me and enchant me with your ways, little Pipa! I love what you made for me....

Renovating my website

After the transfer to a Mac, I lost a lot of the original design of my website in Flash. The problem occured because of the font tables that are after years of computer use extended thru installation of all kinds of programs. But when a new install happens of like in this case the transfer to a total different environment, the problems start big. I used overall the Vrinda typefont. But on the Mac it was missing. And paying 99 dollars for the typefont was a bit to much. Then I rather like to put myself in the hassle of changing the fonts. My advice, when designing, make sure you own the typefont, and have backups, or use the standard fontsets that come with most computers like Arial or Sans Serif. Ok, it's rather boring but it won't give much trouble later on. I choosed a total new color scheme, dark grey in this case for an overall quiet image, and the fact that pictures look much better on grey. Furthermore I lost some weight in the SWF file from 5,6 MB to 2,1. This is done by loading the homepage pictures from external SWF files. It gave me also the oppertunity to make it happen randomly so people have the feeling something changes at the site. The rest was some finetuning too, like the external txt file for the news section and update section. Like this I only have to change the txt and not create a new SWF. This same technique I also used for the galleries. The pictures are downsized with the batch function of Photoshop, that also helps me creating a XML file. The pictures and XML are then put in predefined folders on the server. My Flash reads the pictures automatically into the flash gallery. Very convenient. I had to create also a new guestbook, this time with the use of PHP, there are some great feebies on the net, ready for rebuilding. I would say, check it out and enjoy the 2 new addes galleries: here

film is so dead so is video......

Welcome to the digital revolution called RED. You probably already were seeing it even without knowing. A good example is the movie "Jumper". Not that I am interested in the movie itself, but mere the picture quality. You talk HD? This goes beyond HD it various from 2 times up to 4 times bigger. And it's all digital. 4K shot in raw footage and in the same time the camera creates quicktime movies. They can be used as reference but also as final production file. How does this camera look?

This is just the body, but it's all it is. The camera can be build up with all the gadgets and periphals you need to make it work. It weights a 4.5 kg and is more powerfull then any 35 mm Cine camera. It can record to Compact flash, Harddrives and special solid state flash drives. You wonder? Ok so it's better then film it's bigger then HD, but how does that look? Here is a still, be warned it's a still directly taken from the movie "crossing the line", shot with prototypes. It's 6,8 MB large so it will take a little time to see the original: (4096x1743 pixels not even the full size)

To make it clear again, this is not a photo, this is a movie still. There is so much to tell about this amazing technology, but you can find all the info on the RED website. Ow and don't forget to check the "shot on red" page. There you can find more examples of movies shot with RED. You will be amazed about the crisp and clear quality. There is nothing really nothig comparable. The small movie Mythbusters gives you an inside idea about how it works and how the workflow deals with the RED 4K RAW files. Ow and something else, there will be a 2K pocket pro version in 2009. Maybe it will wake up the moviemaker in you!

To close, here another picture of the RED ONE 4K:

Building a new website

For a client I am building a new website, because her website is a total disaster. From design view but also from commercial attractivness. Because her shop is in the erotic business of fetish clothes and lingerie I was looking for a special touch. Representing the boudoir like feeling but also the edgy atmosphere of a dungeon. Here is the first look into the project. I started by replacing her home screen with this flash intro. At least so people know something is going to change soon.

I started by designing the different parts in Adobe Illustrator and importing them into Carrara Pro 3D. From there the meshes were worked into 3D parts. Text was added as well as different  textures like the wallpaper in the back. The wallpaper I found on the internet and I had to rework it into a texture with photoshop. Then lights were added and the virtual camera movement. The rendering took about 1 hour in good quality. I rendered the 3D images as sequenced tiff files without compression. After this I used photoshop and Adobe Bridge to batch the sequences into jpeg's with progressive quality, after this the sequences were seperated into 2, one for the first clip and the second for the mouseover interaction. Then these sequences were imported into Flash. From there I had to programm the timeline as well the old movie scratches and dust. This is done with the help of some scripting to get the random effect of movie flickr and dust spots. At some point I wanted some small 3D interaction and I created the mouseover. Therefore I had made a second sequence. The problem was to keep the size of the flash down. I did this with the help of photoshop, by using a progressive compressing method. It's close enough for good quality. I ended up with 40% smaller file size. The original can be found here. To give you an idea about the work that get into this, It took me about 2 full days to build this intro.

The biggest problem for me was the overall design. The name of the shop is Catchu - 2bkinky. Making a logo for this name is not quite simple. It's to much information to make a simple design. I started with the character U shape and I thought of a shield. Then I came up with the idea to put it together as some sort of Blacon or family weapon. The owner of the shop was questioning the readibility, because she didn't see the letter U at the beginning. So I moved it more forward on the shield to make it more visible. What do you think is it a good design? Here you see the old design, that in my opinion is far from a design, it's created with the Word Art feature in Microsoft Word

La Môme Piaf

The sparrow girl. A small person with a tormented soul like that of many lifetimes, she will never be forgotten. Edith Piaf. I've been always impressed by her, though many people these days don't know much of her. The movie La vie en Rose or La Môme is an excellent movie. Though for many the choice of flashbacks and flashforwards are pretty confusing, and the difficulty to put all the major events of her life in 2 hours and 20 minutes, you will be astonished about the acting qualities of Marion Cotillard. She is not an actress playing Edith Piaf, she IS Edith Piaf. Not a moment I realized that I was looking at a 31 year old actress. I had the feeling to see Edith playing her own life. I think this is the best acting I've ever seen so far. I can only imagine the difficulty and stress it must have been to play this big part. Even when she is playing the 47 year old Edith, right before she dies, there is no doubt. Especially for Marion this was the hardest part, because she was afraid that it would look rediculous. So she stayed in bed during the whole shoot, even when off camera. Sleeping before she had to perform again, from this position she felt she could put a realistic picture. I think that Marion as an actress comes close to the greatness of Edith Piaf. Though she will never become immortal, she made Edith come alive and immortal again for those who discover her for the first time. It's a must see movie, but be warned, for the sensitive people it's quite a rollercoaster to see this movie.

Hooking up a guitar to the Mac

With Garageband in iLive you get a sophisticated recording and sound manipulation device in your hands. I've been playing classic guitar during my youth, and since I have my Mac and seeing some guy giving a demo with an electric guitar hooked up to a Mac at the store, I wanted to pick up my old hobby for playing myself. So finally I got me this fine piece with warm sound. But then came the question how to hook it up? I saw in the shop then, that somekind of nifty little cable was attached that transformed the mono signal into a 1/4 plug stereo. And of course that was nowhere to be found or it had to be ordered, and I can't wait for orders, I hate that. So I went to the electronics shop, bought me shielded wire and plugs and soldered the bunch together. Excited if my little experiment would work I fired up Garageband and to my suprise an overhelming crisp sound was filling my study. The Mac just did the rest, no amplifier, no nothing. Just staight into the Mac. In Garageband you only need to choose a guitar style: clean Liverpool, 60's structure or what to think of the scorching solo, it's all there. I am not a sound engineer, but I hardly can tell the difference from a tube amplified sound.

Here a small example of the sound, playing the first part of the national hymne of Holland:

The power of miniature worlds

When I was about 7, I liked to walk thru the pages of "Revell"  a famous German brand in toys that made products for miniature worlds for train lovers. Besides that they had all the material to create your own downsized copy of reality. I remember how I loved these pictures coz they seemed to reflect a sort of utopia to me. Especially the post war architecture of Germany was somehow attractive to me. Still this architecture can be found traveling around in Germany.

To reflect this old memory I created two pictures of miniature words myself. The fun thing though that this is all software based and are actually real worlds that I manipulated with the tilt-shift technology. Normally this is done by using a special device to tilt-shift the lens, in this case I found a neat trick within photoshop to create the same feeling. I hope you were fooled by the first look at these pictures.....

Migrating my website

Today I finalized a long prosponed matter, of migrating my website to another hosting company. For years now I've been paying way to much money to the stupid provider that gives me acces to the net. The problem in Belgium is that there are only 2 major players in the market for internet acces. Belgacom, the former state owned telecom company, and Telenet, a private company. Because of this situation there is no competition whatsoever and the prices are sky high for accessing the net. As much this counts also for hosting fees. To give you an example, I payed about 240 euro's a year for maintaining my website with a ridiculous 160 mb size. I moved to one.com, they offer me 2000 mb for 49,50 including the fee for moving my DNS address. 

You wonder why I didn't move before? Because since a few months the .be extension is available in Belgium and also did one.com not operate in Belgium before. 

Anyway, another problem occured moving my files. Before I used to work with my Windows XP pro PC, and I created my files in Flash and HTML with Adobe CS2/CS3. So far so good, untill I discovered today the problems with installed fonts. Of course I should have known this but I never had a thought that one day soon I would start working on a Mac. The difference is the kind of fonts that are OS wise distributed. For instance I used Vrinda as my main font for my website, but it turns out that this is a Service Pack 2 deployed font. So no way this font is available for the Mac unless I have to pay an additional fee for it. It wouldn't be such a problem if the complete layout get's screwed with bigger replacements. This is probably a glitch as well in the Adobe software. I have no clue why suddenly the fonts become bigger, for example from 11 dots to 20 dots. 

Anyway, a tip for y'all out there. If you design something, either break down the font to a graphic or choose the ordinairy known fonts used across the web.

Nostalgia new

Here is an example of running a C64 emulator on my mac. It's funny to see how big the difference is in size. The original resolution of the C64 was 320x200 in screensize and mostly TV-sets were used for hooking up the Commodore. You can image how large and rough the graphics were. But nobody bothered, because nobody new better. Today with screensizes like on my mac of 1920x1200 it seems so primitive. It's possible to run many of the old programs, demos and Arcade games on these emulators. Though some won't really run on the mac others do on my Windows PC. The second screen is a demo running in the C64 of a 3D glass. Boy these things were so exciting in those days.....

Nostalgia

In 1981 CBM (Commodore Business machines) introduced the Commodore 64. It was an exciting time because for the first time computers were brought home for "reasonable" prices. They were even very competitive to the professional IBM computers, and even brought more additional features like a synthesizer chip and for that time amazing color graphics. I remember how I got all my money together to buy this miracle of modern technology.

I went on my bicycle to the nearest shop (30 km) and became the proud owner of a Commodore 64. It's even funny to think of the fact that there was no internet, and that for anything you needed on software or any other kind of peripheral that was needed I had to travel distances.

Most programms were sold on ROM cartridges, cassette tapes and later on 5.24" floppies, the other possibility was to programm yourself in Basic or to type over listings in magazines. After a few years I was getting into the army as a pro, and I needed to have something that was portable. I remember that the SX-64 was released in 1984 and it consisted of a 5" color screen and a built in 5,25" drive (named 1541). Portable was hardly a name for it, you could better call it luggable. In the beginning the price was sky high, I remember a mere 3999 guilders. It was this price that made it not much of a succes. But I was still very impressed.

Hardly to believe these days that those dinosaures of the computer age could stir so much excitement compared to for exampel the Macbook Air. In 1985 prices went suddenly really down and it was available for 1699 guilders, that would be about half in euro's, about 800 euro's. Anyway I went to Rotterdam by train (overcome another distance of 100 km to get to the long wanted gadget). And by the time I returned home I was the proud owner of the SX-64. To give you an idea I added some pictures. Next time I am going to write a bit on some amazing programms that were released and were the messengers of things that would change the computer use forever. 

The technical sheet: (batteries not included, it only worked on AC power)

Commodore SX-64 "Executive"

Introduced: January 1983 Released: January 1984 Weight: 23 pounds Price: US $995. CPU: MOS 6510, 1MHz Audio: 3 channels RAM: 64K Display: built-in 5" color screen 40 X 25 text 320 X 200, 16 colors max Storage: internal 170K floppy drive external floppy drive Ports: S-video, composite video 2 joysticks, cartridge port serial and 'user' ports OS: Commodore BASIC in ROM