To let you all know I’m still alive :). Been rather busy the last couple of months, work is a real bitch at the moment and weeks of 50+ are no exception. Looking at the brighter side, vacation is coming closer quickly. I’m really looking forward to the 3 weeks vacation in Bali, you’ve got to love this economic crisis :). Where I paid like 1100 euro last year to get my is to Bali, I paid 650 euro now. To finish off I’m thinking of blogging about work too but I need to work some stuff out first because by contract I’m bound to an act of secrecy.

Currently I am working with four programming languages/scripts at the same time and while this sometimes frustrates me I am also loving it. It frustrates me because sometimes I mess up really simple things which don’t give an error in one compiler but will do in the other. Also there is a huge difference in how some development environments handle bad code. For example I am working with ActionScript in Adobe Flash and the errors are displayed in the most useless way. This makes bug tracking a bitch. In Java or PHP a line where the fault might have occurred is given. Al though the latter one is not always right it makes diving into it a lot easier.

The good side about it is that I get to do more stuff and I can dive into anything I like doing. A lot of programmers only stick to one language cause it is a b!^<h switching between languages sometimes. The upside is that I know more of what is going on and I can take ideas from one project to the other. There are still a lot of languages I haven’t touched yet and some more I want to rediscover.

One script I am currently working with is JavaScript and this is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen. What will work under one browser won’t work under another and even though there are some really good libraries out there your code will be ugly. The thing that I hate with JavaScript is that you can’t go without it. It is the only script available (badly)supported by the major browsers. This keeps me wondering: why isn’t there an alternative available to JavaScript.

Every browser has 10 ways of markup. You can do HTML formatting, XML formatting, XHTML formatting any many more. Every browser has support for Flash, Silverlight and many other cool technologies. But no matter what there is always only one script available and that is the messy JavaScript. Why is this, and why do all the browsers support it poorly. Maybe in the future their will be alternatives for JavaScript.

Currently I am reading the book Death Star which is set in Star Wars galaxy. This made me to get back in the mood of this classic and wanting to watch the two trilogies again. Here is a Youtube movie to get you in the mood.

Enlightenment for Eric is Bali, enlightenment for Sammy is life it self. For a part enlightenment for me are these epic stories because they always lift my spirit…

Alfred you should blog. I am left wondering(and I guess we all are) to what enlightens you It seems like The blog virus is still going strong but Alfred is not infected yet

Now I have booked my N’th time ticket to the beautiful Bali people ask me what’s so special about Bali and quiet honestly 9 out of 10 times I can’t give them a good answer. For me it’s a feeling, and I’m not able to put this feeling to words. And really I think it’s also, like any feeling, a personal thing. With what expectations are you going to visit Bali? Cause a few weeks ago I spoke with a contractor at work who had visit Bali a few weeks before our talk about Bali and he told me he didn’t like it one single bit. He also stayed in Kuta (the hearth of tourism on Bali) and told me he found it to be too loudly and too ‘forcefully’. When I asked him about what he meant by ‘forcefully’ he told me they (he and his wife) couldn’t walk normal on the streets without being bothered by any local for transport/massage/etc. Although I have to agree with him on those points I also think you have to see through those thinks, sure I also get annoyed when the millions’ girl walks towards me asking if I want a complete massage but I don’t let that rune my day. If you can do that and can ignore all those ignorance’s than in my opinion you can have a great time on Bali. What I want to achieve with this post I’m not sure either, maybe I should stop drinking too much so I won’t feel the urge to write this kind of posts but until that have fun reading.

The 14th of February is coming again and it’s not because I don’t have a steady relationship I hate Valentine’s Day, it’s really the commercialization of the whole event. This may sound stupid coming from a 25 year old but where are the days a simple postcard and a kiss on the cheeks was enough. Nowadays the retail stores want you to believe you have to send as much postcard as you possibly can to all kinds of people you know and you need a huge box of chocolate or a huge bouquet of roses. And weeks in advance they start sending out folders with their ’special’ Valentine’s Day actions. I’m immune for it but other people seem to expect what they see. But it’s not only Valentine’s Day that’s ruined, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas to name a few are completely ruined in my opinion. Really, I think we completely lost the big picture in all those events. It should be about small gestures and not about who can buy me the biggest present. I will stop ranting now before I make an even bigger fool out of myself but I hope you get the point.

As a proud iPhone owner I find myself browsing the Apple App Store from time to time to see what’s available. Most of the time I find some application that look very nice at first sight but after using them they turn out to be horrible. Not the application I found the last time which really solved a problem I have and I think with me a lot of other’s too. How many times are you driving and on the radio is a really nice song but you can’t remember the title, therefore Shazam comes into play. This application ‘listens’ to the song for a few seconds, analyzes this and gives you the title and a link to the iTunes Music Store and even a link to YouTube for a clip. I tried it a few times now and I’m really sold, it performs really well. And the best of all it’s completely free.