I just sold my Linksys WRT54G router on Marktplaats (a hugely popular second hand marketplace here in The Netherlands). It had been gathering dust or a few months, and I didn’t think it deserved that after being my ‘lifeline’ for years. This router has been my single favorite piece of equipment ever. I love the way it looks, I love how it never ever failed on me, I love the simple setup, it’s hackability (although I never did load any of the alternate firmwares out there).

I feel silly for feeling bad. Guess it’s quite a feat for a small plastic box to get me all sentimental. But now that wireless-n is here, and my provider-supplied modem/router finally supports WAP encryption, there’s no need for me to hang on to it. I hope it makes the buyer happy. Sigh…

Dear Movie Industry,

I love movies. I go to the cinema nearly every week, buy and watch lots of DVDs and occasionally catch a flick on TV. I also love high definition video, and now that the ‘format war’ is finally settled I’m looking into buying a Blu-Ray disc player. My problem is however that I own hundreds of movies on ’standard resolution’ DVDs. I’m afraid these will look poor by comparison, and will eventually have to be replaced.
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As an old school web designer, I consider myself to have a firm grasp of what pixels are all about. Back in the early 1990’s I used to optimize the hell out of tiny graphics, manually editing colour palettes and using things like Floyd-Steinberg dithering. Maybe this is why I don’t understand the hype about upscaling DVD players like this one.
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OK, i admit it. I’m probably the only person bothered by this. In the age of broadband where mobile phones browse the web at high speed, I’m probably a dinosaur for trying to keep movie file sizes down. But still. There still are people out there who browse the web at 56 kilobits per second, waiting for minutes while a web page full of graphics is transferred to their computer by two analog modems shouting bits at each other.

That’s one reason why I decided to see if re-writing my WP-Cumulus Flash movie in Actionscript 3 would yield a smaller file. Unfortunately, the outcome was not all I had hoped it to be.
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Ziggo is a new cable company here in The Netherlands, that was formed when three major television providers (including mine) recently merged. They introduced their new philosophy in what is probably the worst-recieved TV commercial of the year, so they rubbed me the wrong way even before I had to contact their support desk today. If it wasn’t already clear, this is going to be one of my ‘incompetent companies’ posts…
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It’s been five years since Matt released WordPress 0.7. I think it’s quite an accomplishment that (and how) WordPress has managed to evolve into a very mature blogging solution with all the right features and no bloat whatsoever. I switched to WP (from Movable Type, like so many others) in 2005, and it has since become my favorite CMS solution. I’ve been using it professionally for a while now, and have made quite a few customers very happy.

So here’s to you, WordPress. May you continue to evolve the way you did!

I’ve been connected to my LAN through the air for a couple of years now, and I’ve had some pretty mixed experiences. My Linksys WRT54G router is a marvel, and has yet to fail me. The adapters I’ve used with my PC however have for the must part not been able to keep up. And, as I realized today, they all happen to be made by Sitecom.
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I’ve just uploaded a new version of WP-Cumulus. Version 1.03 attemps to fix compatibility issues, adds a widget, speed control and several other little things. See here for the changelog.

Update
With the help of Mujahid (and several others), I’ve been able to track down the cause of the “it kills my blog” error. I turns out I was closing PHP’s output buffer once too often, which PHP version 5.2 and newer does not like very much. All should be well for these users with version 1.04. Can’t tell you how relieved I am.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my WP-Cumulus WordPress plugin. Many people have asked my whether they can use the Flash movie in their own projects, and how to go about it. Well, here’s how.
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I’ve been enjoying Suzero’s line of “incompetent companies” posts, so I thought I’d join in…

The internet is where you go to get a good deal, right? I order tons of stuff online, and have had only very few negative experiences. That’s why I felt quite confident ordering a cab to the airport (Schiphol, Amsterdam in my case) through taxi2airport.com. Big mistake.
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