Geert JM Vanderkelen

With all the new gadgets and modern technology in our pockets and bags, it is great to see that lots of people, including myself, still use ordinary paper maps to find there ways through the city.

It’s been proven that new technology is actually slowing us down. DVD takes 30 seconds, 1sec for a VHS, for example. Or imagine you have to look up a map on your iPad of the Berlin S/U-Bahn. You’ll still be wondering how to get online, and I’m sitting in the hotel writing a blog post.

My blog (and website) is now running on self-hosted WordPress installation. Yeah, it’s a PHP-thing, but I couldn’t bother making my own with Django or similar using Python. No time for that and I’m not a programming-language-radical-idiot.

RSS feeds have changed: you’ll find the link on my new website.

Why I moved away from Blogger? It just plain sucked, and I have had my fill of it..

I needed to create some plugin for WordPress. Existing plugins redirecting old Blogger URLs were not good enough. The code you’ll find below will redirect links from Blogger to the new links in WordPress. Hopefully it helps somebody!

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Redirect Blogger links
Version: 1.0
Plugin URI: http://geert.vanderkelen.org/post/301/
Description: Redirect requests using Blogger links to WordPress link.
Author: Geert Vanderkelen
Author URI: http://geert.vanderkelen.org/

*/

add_action('init', 'redirect_blogger_links');

function redirect_blogger_links()
{
  global $wpdb;
  $uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

  $matches = array();
  if( preg_match('#(/[0-9]{4}/[0-9]{2}/.*\.html)$#', $uri, $m) ) {
    $query = "SELECT post_id FROM $wpdb->postmeta ".
      "WHERE meta_key='blogger_permalink' AND meta_value='".$m[1]."'";
    $post = $wpdb->get_var($query);
    if( $post ) {
      $wp->query_vars = array('p'=>$post);
      $url = get_permalink($post);
    }
    if( isset($url) ) {
      header("Location: $url", true, 301);
      header("Connection: close");
      exit();
    }
  }
}

?>

Note: if somebody can optimize it so the plugin only kicks in on links from Blogger, that would be great. It’s now executed on each request, which is a bit overkill.

Our new born son Tomas on his mother’s shoulder.

If you want to see Tomas, or watch more pictures: come visit us!

Lots, if not everyone goes crazy about privacy. Well, putting pictures or videos of your baby or kids online is actually invading theirs. Our kid will have the choice later to do whatever he/she likes with the millions of shots we’ve made, just like us, the pre-born mass-Internet kiddoes.

So, this is a call: respect your kid’s privacy and ask if you can expose them when they reached an age they actually understand the consequences. Ask yourself if you’d agree your parents suddenly start to post nude pictures of you in the bathtube when you were 5.

Sometimes I say things worth blogging:

If you know something is coming, don’t wait for it.

Today I tried MobileMe again registring for the 60-day trial. I cancelled it 15 minutes later. Expensive and useless. If you ask 99 EUR per year for a service, you would imagine a personal domain for your e-mail. But no, Apple thinks it’s doing it correctly, but it’s laughable. I’m sure they don’t lack the tallent to do it, just the balls at management level.

Lets hope Apple puts it in soon, I might consider paying for it. It must be great to sync data over MobileMe because most other tools are just almost-working. Now it’s back to Google where all features are there (for ‘free’), but online..

I’m really pissed off, again, every year. Syncing contacts and calendars offline is a pain if you got a few Macs, iPhone and iPad. Nothing is working as it should, MobileMe would be great.

I’m getting tired of this: Apple has a brilliant OS, great hardware and some great software. But Apple just painfully blows it at service level.

The USA is not particulary famous for its cuisine. I must admit that it has been quite good the past 10 days. The Angus Burger at Hyatt, with mushrooms? Yummy!

Today I saw KFC advertising a new sandwish. All chicken, with cheese, with bacon in the middle. That’s right: bacon.

This evening I went for pasta at the restaurant. I started with chowder, which was great. Then the entree (maindish in US, go figure). Tagiatelle topped with prawns, jumbo ones. Ladies & gents, the sea creatures were wrapped in bacon.

It was good though.

Day in, day out, I speak, read, write, love, in English. My mother tongue, however, is Dutch (not Flemish *spit*). Today, I was finalizing the handwritten letter to my grandmother and reading up a message from my sister, I came up with a new Dutch word. Oh, it might already exist, but Google doesn’t know about it yet (unless for the typos).

avonkuren: avonturen + kuren .. doing crazy stuff while going through life

Oh, and now back cooking.

You’ve see them, those product/website names meaning nothing but making millions. Names which seem to come from stupid teenagers writing short messages on their phones.. Today I figured out a possible reason why we have such names.

I’m brainstorming a new project and came up with a good name to brand it. The problem? Assholes have parked any combination of the name for most top domains out there.

There you go: a good idea down the drain.. Or I’ll just come up with a weird name and hope people will forgive me. Buying the domain? LOL.

Vacation, and the mind is free. Then I scribble something, unleash it upon Earth where only a handful might read it:

Stop for a moment
And watch around
Hush for a second
And hear the sound

Think of your past step
And watch the road ahead
Pick up a fight
And try to flight

Break your habits
Stop living by one’s wits
Take another curve
And make some surf