UGent Closed Calendar

Posted: 25th April 2012 by Gert in Work
0

I have no clue if UGent has a digital version of the closed calendar, but I took the liberty of posting my Goog calendar for when its closed; since I have it anyway.. Disclaimer: dont blame me if there’s a typo, use this at your own risk ;)

XML: https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/u679418c6kfbtu38teakiqbt5o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
ICAL: https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/u679418c6kfbtu38teakiqbt5o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
HTML: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=u679418c6kfbtu38teakiqbt5o%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/Brussels
CSV: UgentGesloten2012

A preview:

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Excited about cyberpunk ~ Shadowrun Returns

Posted: 17th April 2012 by Gert in Games
5

I know its not exactly Cyberpunk but still, it comes very close and I am excited.

Shadowrun Backer

I had heard of the Shadowrun rpg but never really touched it; let alone played it. I’m really looking forward to this game! This being said, I’d prefer to play it on Android instead of PC but I guess I’ll just have to hope it comes along some day.

Edit by request from the comments: The game was always coming to tablets near you
Shadowrun Returns (for Apple & Android tablets and PCs) is the game that Shadowrun fans have been waiting for a long time.
hooray!
The game does have some vocal fans though :)

This would, I guess, look a lot like my favorite Android game: Cyberlords – Arcology
Its an awesome “Lead your four-man team of augmented cyber-warriors on dangerous infiltration missions.” type game and I loved every second of it. Awesome game! And playing it filled me with hope for games to come; its obviously a big engine and common sense dictated that they must’ve written it with re-use for different settings & stories in mind. Sadly, a couple of emails to the developers shattered my hopes. I came to understand that the engine is old and the story is pretty hard coded. Creating a new game on the engine would not be a viable option as it is not anything near the current options for Apple-Android cross platform code.
I do get that they dont want to invest in the concept any further; I dont think the game in itself was a huge financial success, considering the probably big dev costs for the engine. I figured the investment would be worth while after creating several different stories and settings, but ….

That being said, Arcology provides an awesome 6 hours of mobile entertainment!
And I am backing the new Shadowrun game because I expect it to be Awesome!

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Opeth – Storm Corrosion

Posted: 22nd March 2012 by Gert in Entertainment
0

I remembered that Opeth has a new album right about this year so I went to have a look

And I pre-orederd Storm Corrosion (CD+DVD)

I cant wait :) I am very curious about the 5.1 tracks!

Being excited about the whole 5.1 thing, I remembered that the last Opeth CD I bought had a DVD included! So I checked the Watershed Wiki page; lo & behold, it has a 5.1 track! Guess what disk I’ll be playing next :D

Exciting!

Disconcerting however, was discovering that I actually missed that they made another album last year!! Heritage, apparently. Though I was listening to it as I was ordering the new CD. I was trying this Grooveshark thingamajiggy and clicked the most recent album, without really considering the name, thinking I had put on Watershed. And honestly wondering how I could have missed the nice piano intro :) And remembering the album to be a lot heavier last time I listened to it ……

So! A whole Opeth adventure! (allright, that might have been an overstatement just now) resulting in a pre-order and the intention to buy Heritage ASAP :)

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Q: What is the tastiest kind of donut? Please do not reply “bagel.”

Posted: 16th March 2012 by Gert in Food
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A: I hate donuts. I honestly dont understand what people like about them. Its come to the point where I have decided European donuts must suck and I need to go to the US to try a donut because if the whole of america is enamoured with what they sell as donuts here, you’re all out of your minds. (more than you bargained for as an answer? yeah, thought so)

Answer on the Diesel Sweeties backer survey http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dieselsweeties/diesel-sweeties-ebook-stravaganza-3000

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Is this how your job looks? And if you’d want it to, why doesnt it?

Posted: 15th March 2012 by Gert in Life
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  • Does your job look like this?
  • Would you like it to look like this? (with newer tech and gear appropriate to your job, of course )
  • Why doesnt it look like this?
  • Are you CONTENT that it doesnt? Really??
  • What are you doing to solve that problem?
  • Why isn’t it working?

make sure to be painfully honest.

A thought that hit me upon seeing GQ’s Your Morning Shot: Hunter S. Thompson blog post.

edit: Photo from the HUNTER S. THOMPSON, GONZO PORTFOLIO. Self Portrait, Big Sur, 1961

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Conversations: Trying to give money for digital content

Posted: 7th March 2012 by Gert in Conversations, Interwebs
4

I was talking to a nice person in publishing when he asked me the following question. I might have given him more of an answer than he bargained for.. A third in the conversation series (because I am SO interesting!)

Just out of curiosity, Where do you typically buy your ebooks?

Buying anything digital these days is plain painful. Mp3′s, audiobooks, series, movies, magazines, books .. though its already much better than half a year ago.

I’ve had the best luck with just buying from wherever the writer links me; generally the publisher site, though its always been somewhat of a search so far.. I bought an ebook from http://www.blacklibrary.com yesterday and it was a horrible experience. The torrents are much much easier, faster and cheaper.
I always consider Kindle too (the Kindle Android app) but I like to have a DRM free copy of the book at home; services like that may stop working some day and I don’t want to lose my digital bookshelf on that day.
For RPG related books I go to https://www.rpgnow.com/ – the site has awesome service but its hard to separate the good and “less good” content. And some of the books there are just waaay too expensive.

I haven’t bought much ebooks yet though; I have a lot of books in dead tree edition and generally love paper books but lately I haven’t found the time to read on paper. On my phone however, I can just read whenever I have a few minutes to spare.

Auto posting this the 7th. I’ll add any replies I get between then and now and maybe even some links about the guy, the book, how long its taking me to finally get a digital copy and how long it would take me to just torrent it. I’m not sounding bitter here, I hope..
The guy is one of the good people; he’s going out of his way to sell me what I need! Its just such a very very frustrating situation.

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Server moved!

Posted: 5th March 2012 by Gert in Information technology
0

I just moved servers!

Server move
Posted: 5th March 2012 (edit) by Gert in Information technology on the old server

I’m about to move servers.

I’m not happy as to the timing, the why & the etc, but I AM happy with the move to a fresh server4you.net machine!

This is a last post on the old machine, moving the data now!

Hooray!
next; keeping an eye on how the server behaves to tweak the apache optimization

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my horribly distracted mind

Posted: 29th February 2012 by Gert in Life
2

I was thinking about something; working a problem out. Listening to Jeff Bridges with one ear – litterally, using one ear bud.

when a bike raced by.

I like bikes; bikes are nice.
good sound

great how a bike roaring away kinda like fades out at the end as it gets farther away.
why is that?
the sound kinda fades out – cant describe how but in a kinda sagging dropping curve. kinda like x^2 drawn out but inverse. and sagging. (already getting distracted along the lines of the mathematical equasion that would exactly cover this instead of the original content)
Probably not motor related; he’s probably still accelerating at the same rate etc
not road related either, there is a slope but I have heard that before with other roads

sound related then?
yes, sound related
so sound kinda travels at a curve like that – well, sound level drops like that.
and not all the tones seem to travel as well since the sound changes with the distance

Interesting, but it utterly took my thoughts away from what I was working on. (oh I hear another bike – trying to ignore it, it came towards me, that’s interesting too – partly successfully ignored. re-reading to catch the thread of what I was saying again) I should have listened to Jeff with 2 ear buds; that way I wouldn’t have heard that sound. And not been distracted. The predictable sound I can ignore to drown out the random sounds (several woman are walking down the hall. Sounds like heels, the low thick kind, not the spiky ones, more than one, walking from behind me to .. re-reading to catch the thread of what I was typing – hyper concentration rules but its not always attainable – I could use a coffee – first finish this; re-reading for real now) that distract me to no end.

and now I’m writing a blog post about it all.
– back to the original train of thought now! or coffee

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Beard ~ Mutton Chops

Posted: 28th February 2012 by Gert in Life
1

Before leaving for vacation, noticed that Wolverine (in the movie) has a great beard!

Mutton Chops

I wasnt sure how its called so I checked the beard types guy blog and apparently they’re mutton chops! According to Wikipedia, they are an extension to side burns and sadly don’t merit a proper page. wikipedia.org/Mutton_chop

So I gave it a try with Bert and the results are apparently ok! I’m not sure yet but people are telling me it looks good and I’m happy do do something else, I’ve had a goatee for so long..

Gert Schepens <— really proud of thi OMG ITS A HORRIBLE PHOTO!

Anyway; I now noticed that the Wolverine chops are slightly different to my cut in that they aren’t just shaved down but slant to be narrower at the bottom than the mouth (look at the hotlinked image) and I’m thinking I might want to try that!!

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More writing & some of my articles are now available for free pdf download!

Posted: 16th February 2012 by Gert in Linux
0

Another editorial written and posted; hooray :)

Felt like the right time to update gertschepens.be/writings with the most recent data and while doing so, I found out that 2 of my articles are now available online for your free downloading convenience; the Unity one and the Virtualisation article! Its great to know that anyone perusing that site can now, hopefully, find interesting answers and knowledge! Cool :)

The links are available on the gertschepens.be/writings page and feel free to drop me a line of whatever criticism you might come up with :)

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Switched Mobile WordPress plugin

Posted: 15th February 2012 by Gert in Interwebs
1

As I mentioned yesterday, I installed a dreaded Mobile plugin.

I first installed the WordPress Mobile Pack and while that worked, it didnt entirely do what I needed it to do.
It was very very extensive but it wanted to create an m.blog.cone.be for the mobi version and that just wasnt what I had in mind. I just want a skin over blog.cone that automagically shows on mobile devices and that has an off switch. I got it to show on blog.cone but then the off switch didnt completely work and since there is such a big difference in the approach I want and the plugin offers, I decided to replace it. Also I didnt like the look of the skin.

So today, after talking again to the instigator, @frlinux, I installed wptouch (an elegant touch theme for your WordPress) and I am (so far) much happier now!
It just loads the touch interface, its prettier, the on of button on the bottom works and is nice, …… The only thing I liked more about the previous one was to show a long excerpt for only the first post, but I dont mind that either. Its a good plugin!
So Im happy :) And it feels ready.. Hooray

Hooray

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Finished Bleeding Hearts by Ian Rankin

Posted: 14th February 2012 by Gert in Entertainment
0

(finished it yesterday night actually. A bit later to sleep than I’d planned but who here can put down those last 30 pages of a good book?)

She had just over three hours to live, and I was sipping grapefruit juice and tonic in the hotel bar.

It was probably the grapefruit & tonic, but I really liked this opener :)

I’ve been in a reading spree recently and honestly, it feels great to read again. I kinda lost that in the recent fuss around whatnot and it feels very good to be reading again :)

And I enjoyed Bleeding Hearts by Ian Rankin!
It was more action oriented than what I’ve come to expect from the Ranking stories and his art heist book, but that’s definitely not a bad thing :) Good read!

Follow the man on Twitter @Beathhigh – funny thing, I started following him after he sent a very very deep #drwhisky tweet to @warrenellis!

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