Many of you might not know it, but today marks the 20th birthday of the Internet. Back in 1988 at 14:28 exactly, Piet Beertema, sysop for the Dutch CWI in Amsterdam, received the first intercontinental e-mail, send over a half-open network. Until then the Internet had been a purely US network, used by exclusively by universities and the US Defense. Indeed the term "Internet" has been used since 1974, but if you look at the timeline of the Internet, it wasn't until 1988 that it really started to span the globe. But Internet really took off after the invention of a tool to organize information on the internet using a graphical interface, called a "webbrowser". Tim Berners-Lee invented the online equivalent of hypertext in 1989 and some years later the World Wide Web really began with the introduction of the "Mosaic web browser" in 1993. This was a graphical browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NCSA-UIUC), led by Marc Andreessen. Mosaic was eventually superseded in 1994 by Andreessen's Netscape Navigator, which replaced Mosaic as the world's most popular browser.

After that it is all history.

Kudos to Barack Hussein Osama. He is living proof that anything is - still - possible in the Land of opportunities. The big question however, is, "now what?". His predecessor George W. Bush has made it almost impossible for him to do anything that costs money. It's like trying to rebuild a village that has been pillaged by Vikings and burned to the ground. Where do you start? The National Debt Clock at New York's Times Square had to be adjusted this October at the hight of the financial crisis to make place for the digit "1" at the same place where the $ sign is. The government’s debts have ballooned so badly the New York landmark has run out of digits to record the spiraling figure. Whatever his plans are: where will he get the funding from? It seems to me that this is an almost impossible task? Although Obama won't be president until next year he already started to find the right people for his government who will help him with the changes he wants to make.

Like most Europeans I hope that Obama will start by closing down Guantanamo Bay. After that he has the daunting task to try to get all the military safely out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. He also said he would go after Osama Bin Laden. But first and foremost he will need to - somehow - boost the American economy.

Given the state of the Union the big question is: how to pay for change? I guess we will find out in the next few months when news will trickle down the grapevine.

With less than 36hrs to go, polls show it's not going to be that exiting: Obama still has a firm lead on McCain according to CNN. According to many people it's not the question if Obama will win, but how big the win will be. So is this going to be the landslide that polls predict? Or is it going to be closer than we all think? Untill last week the figures were a bit sketchy to say the least. A reported 14% of the voters was still undecided. If you look at the CNN election tracker, its still a close call with about 5-6% undecided and 51% for Obama against 44% for McCain. However, that would result in a 291 against 157 electoral votes. If you would have asked me in September I would have said that I would not be surprised if McCain would win the elections due to the fact that I firmly believe that Americans in general would have a hard time accepting Obama's race and background. But given the fact that McCain thourougly dropped the ball in October during the highpoint of the financial crisis, I have to admit it would be very surprising if he wins. I'm sure people are so fed up with the Republican disaster called Bush, they would vote for any Democrat.

To be honest I did still bet this weekend (against my girlfriend) that McCain is going to win. When I loose I will have to treat her to a nice dinner in Amsterdam next time she visits. I guess I better go pick a restaurant already :-)

Unless in some way or form this election is rigged, Obama is going to win for sure. My prediction? People are so fed up with Bush it will be a landslide victory, sending a clear message to Washington: "Change is coming. Oh yes, we can."

"Unboxing" usually means that I'm unpacking some new gadget (which I also did this week, but more about that later), but in this case I've been unpacking my stuff in my new home. For the last week I have been living in out of a box, but today my brother-in-law helped me and put my wardrobe closets together. So the last few hours I have been re-arranging my clothes and what have you. Anyway, my bedroom looks a lot better now. I still have load of D.I.Y. stuff to do, but all in all I hope I have more time now to play a bit with my new toy: a T-Mobile MDA Vario IV (which is essentially a branded HTC Touch Pro).

More to come. Also about election day in the USA.

Ok boys & girls; I moved into my new home this weekend. Yesterday I rented a big truck and with the help of my sister and brother-in-law and long time friend Sander, we managed to squeeze everything into my new home. We only drove up & down 2 times, and one extra time to drop-off the fridge and microwave that I no longer need.

Now, I still have a few big jobs ahead still: including cleaning my old home. It's gonna be a bitch, but hey, I have no choice and need to finish up asap. Anyway: I'm still tired and need to take a shower badly.

Blog you later!

Jeezz Louise. Working on my new home and trying to manage all the logistics and being extremely busy at my work, is not a good combination. I'm tired as hell. But thanks to the efforts of my sister and my brother-in-law I am booking progress. There is no way in Hell that I could have done this without them, so I'm trying to come up with some nice present for them. Anyway: the final countdown is exactly 14 days from today: on Friday Oct. 31st I need to be gone from my old appartment and moved in to my new one. A few challenges are left: putting in the floor (which arrived yesterday), painting/cleaning the ground floor and then moving in. Upstairs is as good as done (besides the floor, which I hope to finish this weekend).

I need a serious vacation after I move in; but that won't happen for a while :-(

(To be continued).

Whoa. My legs are hurting from walking up & down the stairs and balancing the wallpaper steamer. I've spend the last three days trying to peel of wallpaper that the previous owners of the apartment painted over. Without that paint it wouldn't be that hard I guess, but because of it, some walls take forever to clean. Anyway: together with some help from my sister and brother-in-law I was able to finish the upstairs of my apartment and I will try to start on the hallway today (both upstairs and downstairs. Then the living room will be next. Yup I will need all the time I get this time. But all the work will pay of for sure: it will last a life time.

(To be continued).

Today was the first day that I was able to do some serious work on my new home, together with my brother-in-law who is a real handy man (I have to left hands when it comes to stuff like this). We are steaming of all the ugly looking wallpaper and then painting it. It's hard work - especially because all I normally do is push my mouse around a desk. It took us all day to more or less finish the smallest bedroom. I hope we can do a lot tomorrow and Sunday, so I can keep working next week when I have the week off. I'm already very tired after one day and I am going to be bed now.

(To be continued).

Whoa, I thought that my last blog for a while, was going to be the one I wrote this Sunday. But given the extraordinary circumstances it's hard not to comment on what's going on. It's a financial Pearl Harbour or better yet: a 9/11. Going down, going down! Abandon ship! Panic in the disco! Red alert! Everyone brace for impact! Ok. Now what? Well, I guess it's time to take a deep breath and sit still: just like you would when you get a close shave with a nasty razor. If you are a real maverick I would suggest now is a good time to buy a shitload of stock for almost no money. Let's face it: trading stock is all about timing. Everyone is saying that the Republicans are messing up the world economy by not approving the bailout. But it was a bad plan in the first place. Anyway: an interesting view on things comes from filmmaker Michael More (read on for that).

In the mean time I'm preparing for a transition from one appartment to another. Great time to buy house huh?
Continue reading "A financial Pearl Harbour"

48 hours left and I'm the proud owner of my first home. On Wednesday I'll be signing all the paperwork and my mortgage will start. Offcially I'll be moving out my current apartment on November 1st so I have one month to get everything fixed in my new home. The only things I am going to do is paint all walls and get a nice floor. Not a hardwood floor as it is way to expensive and also if I ever sell the home there is no guarantee that whoever buys it will like it. So as an investment it's not that great. Besides that I will need to buy some new curtains and maybe some new furniture (a new big desk for instance). My apartment is full of boxes and I have a ton of stuff to throw away, mostly boxes and old magazines. As of Wednesday I'll have about a week and a half to do as much as possible. I hope it all goes well.

I'm exited. Oh yeah ;-)

Oh yes my fellow Californication lovers: he's back! hank Moody; the man with the sex-addiction, drug-habit, foul-mouth but small heart. The official season 2 premiere is going to be on September 28 but I downloaded the first 2 epsiodes (slip of the Tongue and The Great Ashby) already! Dude, I love the internet! I can't wait to see all episodes.
The first season ended with Karen running from her own wedding and jumping into Hank's battered Porsche 911 convertible. That ending let lot's of people speculating about the next season. Many people thought it to be one of those infamous 'dream scenes' where it just all turns out to be a figment of imagination.
Well, having seen both episodes of season2 I can tell you... You'll have to watch it for yourself! No spoilers here :-)

So, why the heck would we need yet another browser to surf the Internet? Isn't it enough that we have Opera, FireFox, Internet Exploder and a couple of dozen other totally obscure browsers (including Netscape)? Well, Google now has also launched a browser of their own, called "Chrome". Thus was announced by Google just yesterday evening. My biggest beef with these kind of 'innovations' is the fact that IT (and therefor the Web) thrives on standards. Without standards there is chaos.

Just compare it to driving: there is a good reason why we all agree to drive on just one side of the road. If people suddenly would decide to drive wherever they like, it would be mayhem and chaos.

If you know anything about developing for the web, you probably know what a pain in the butt it can be to make your website compliant with each browser. Luckily most clients (companies) only want to pay for optimizations for maybe two browsers: Internet Explorer and Firefox (or Internet Explorer and Safari).

Also: forget about my comment about standards: most companies Microsoft just does not stick by the (web)standards anyway. This has been so since the dawn of the browser. Each browser has its own weird quirks and as a developer it can drive you crazy trying to fix this. Anyway: maybe Chrome will set the new "standard".

So why would we need another browser then? Well Google tries to explain this by publishing some silly comic.

In this document Google starts by saying: "First, browsers need to be more stable". Now, I don't know what browser they are using, but mine (Safari, IE 7) hardly ever crash. Firefox sometimes crashes, but that's usually my own fault for using so ridiculously many plug-ins.

So stability seems to be a non-issue to me to be honest.

Second, Google states that browsers need to be faster: "they need to start faster and load pages faster".

Again this seems like a non-issue to me: how fast your browser starts up, heavily depends on how fast your PC is. Firefox starts real quick on my Quad core Dell XPS, but real slow on my Eee PC (900 Mhz core solo). No surprise there. How fast it can render pages depends on the page. I say we need better designed webpages. Last but not least: how 'fast' your bowser is also depends on your connection to the Net.

Finally, Google states that "browsers should be more secure". Well, let's put it this way: "some" browsers should be more secure; specifically Internet Explorer. Although, Firefox has it's fair share of critical security bugs as well.

It seems to me this is one valid reason so far. By running each tab in a kind of 'sandboxed environment' I'm sure the Google browser can potentially be more secure than others (now watch the first security holes pop-up this week).

Another valid reason I see is that the current Web 2.0 depends heavily on Ajax. And sometimes your browser doesn't handle this too well. So I'm sure there is room for improvement there. And Google Chrome more or less promises this.

Another thing Google has going for Chrome: they use the same webkit as Apple does for Safari. As I understand it Chrome scores better than Safari in terms of compatibility (Acid 2 and Acid 3), so Apple might benefit from this as well. Heck: maybe Apple and Google will strike a deal and Apple will just exchange Safari for Chrome.

Last but not least why I predict Chrome is going to be a succes, is because Google is behind it. Google is good. Google is (still) hot. So far almost everthing Google touched has turned into solid gold. I see no reason why this new venture will not succeed.

Update: I installed Chrome beta and so far it looks good. It's a lot better already than Safari on the PC. Try it yourself: http://www.google.com/chrome/