January 2007 - Posts
It seems there's something to be celebrated today, so my girlfriend went and bought this little gem for me called the Gear4 HouseParty II. Its design is pretty cool, and I must say the quality of the sound comming out of that little box (approx. 25 cm wide) is pretty stunning! It comes with docks for all iPods (except for the shuffle) and even has its own remote, which lets you skip songs, change the volume and even use the iPod menu. Thanks Kaatje, for this pretty neat present!
After managing to dodge tags for quite some time, I've been tagged twice this week. Both PJ van de Sande and Marcel Boersma tagged me, so here we go...
- We named our cat after a dog
Our cat's name is 'Dribbel', which is the Dutch name for the dog 'Spot'. The most important reason for naming the cat like that, is because of a big white spot on its back and a smaller black spot on its nose. Next to that, 'dribbelen' is Dutch for a certain way of walking which Dribbel does too... And of course, we just liked the name ;).
- I'm a Stephen King fan
Not only do I have 20+ Stephen Kings movies on DVD, I also have many of his books. Some of them in Dutch, but most of them in English because sometimes stuff gets lost in translation. And I like the original stuff better. At this point I still think Storm of the Century is the best film based on a Stephen King book. Especially because the movie takes you through more than 6 hours of suspense, without ever getting boring. Other great films based on a King book (in no particular order): The shining (Here's Johnny!), Dreamcatcher, The green mile, The Shawshank redemption, etc.......
- I play in musicals
Currently I have played in three productions of the Veldhovense Revue (link to Dutch site). It's a musical-kind-of-thing with a custom written story that references current affairs in Veldhoven, a village next to Eindhoven. It has been quite a lot of fun, so I'm looking in to doing a bit more than 'only' play in the revue every 2 years. But because each revue has about 1 year of rehearsing, time's kinda short. And yes, occasionaly I had to dance. Or 'move' as I like to call it :D.
- The origin of my nickname (Gump)
When I was in college, a friend of mine always called me 'from the forrest', as that is my last name roughly translated into English. It took my fellow students about 6 months to come up with the link to Forrest Gump. Since that day they started calling me Gump. After a few months I accepted it and started using it myself. I actually kinda like it... ;)
- I wanted to become a doctor
When I just started high school, I wanted to become a doctor. A children's doctor to be precise. I was always fascinated with medical stuff, and I wanted to work with children. Becoming a children's doctor seemed the perfect option combining the two. During high school my interests changed, and lots of things happened in my personal life that made me reconsider about what I wanted to become. Around that time, my brother attended technical college and had to program a Censim via our 486. That made me turn... A few weeks later I had made my first program in Pascal. A couple of months later a career test pointed me towards software development. I have no regret whatsoever about the choice I made: I'm lovin' it!
So there you have it. Five things you probably didn't know about me. Or didn't want to know ;). It's pretty hard finding 5 people who haven't been tagged yet. I'll give it a try, but I might tag people who have been tagged already...
Scott Guthrie
announced it January 23rd: version 1.0 of the
ASP.Net AJAX extensions has been
released. Good news ... !
Scott also added
a post containing
Links to ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 resources, and answers to some common questions. A good read for people who would like to get started on AJAX. It catches some of the common problems you might encounter when you get started with the ASP.Net AJAX extensions. I liked the addition 2.0 (ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX extensions), but that's not used everywhere. Probably because it's kinda weird using two (different) version numbers in a single products' name after adding 1.0 for the version for the AJAX library... (full & difficult productname used
here.)
This morning we landed in Amsterdam at approximately 7.30 am. We had a great week in America, starting of with the great sessions at Microsoft for LEAP. Together with a colleague of mine (Ruud Campsteijn) I stayed for a few more days, so we got to see some more than just the inside of the Microsoft building, like an NBA game, the Boeing factory, Downtown Seattle and so on. You will be hearing more about the LEAP sessions in a little while. Right now, I've been awake for 24 30 hours straight, so it might be a good idea to go sleep now...
The last thing I did today before I'll be going to sleep in a minute (except for writing this blogpost) was sign up with technorati. I'm trying to find out how I can realy use it, but the first step has been made. Tomorow I'll try to get the search and 'view profile' links working. I'll blog to you guys later. But first, let's get some sleep ...
It's almost here... Next monday me and about 30 LogicaCMG colleagues will be heading to Redmond. I'm pretty excited: we'll be attending some pretty cool sessions, and some of us will get the opportunity to take a look at Microsofts vision of the future home in their Microsoft Home. Besides that I'll stay a few days longer, so I can see something of America. My first trip over there ever ... !
Lately there have been some big changes at our house. Because my girlfriend and I both played in a musical through December, most of the chores were ignored. The past week and a half we catched up on some of them. Or actually, on a lot of them. We closed two holes in walls which were there because of bathroom remoddeling, painted those walls, mounted our new TV to the wall in the bedroom, got two sidetables, ordered lamps for the dining area and much, much more. Our house is becoming a home more and more.
I'm using my Xbox a lot. Now no longer as just a games console, but also as an extender for my Media Center*, as a means to keep in contact with friends and as part of my home cinema system. I think the HD-DVD player (is there an ETA for Europe?) and IPTV (Dutch article) will contribute to the further success of the Xbox. And of course, it's a great games console. Gears of War anyone?
Last but not least, I changed the look of this blog, as you might have noticed. Not really usefull information, but I thought it put it in here... ;). I've picked up blogging again, so stay tuned for more howto's, code snippets, solutions for problems and so on.
* I'm still looking for a way to transport the entire TV signal (all channels) through air or the electrical network in my house. Suggestions are welcome!
The past weeks have been busy for me, but especially in the evenings, with the musical I played in and all that... During the day, I had some spare time every now and again, and I wasted most of that on my Xbox 360. ... loving it ;) ...
XBox Live is getting more and more functionality. On top of that, more and more people are connecting... I'm curious which bloggers/blog-readers game online with their Xbox 360 and which games are played. Maybe we can join sometime, to play games together? Gamertag:
OZGump.