I regularly buy stuff on the internet. You can compare prices from behind your computer, and the item is delivered on your doorstep a few days later. I had way more problems with items bought in regular shops. So shopping on internet is easy, convenient, and (most of the time) cheap. But is it safe ?
When buying stuff on internet, there's a small amount of time where the buyer is quite unprotected. It is between the time of payment, and the time of receiving the item. At that time, there's nothing much you can do but wait, and trust the seller has sent the item to you. This gray area of time turned black for me last week.
I was browsing Ebay for a second-hand smartphone, when I found a Nokia N96, and decided to bid for it. To my surprise, I won the phone. So I payed, emailed the seller the shipping address and waited for it to arrive. Three days later, however, I noticed the seller had removed his Ebay account, and that was a warning flare that went of in my mind. I decided to request Ebay for the seller contact data, like phone number and address. I quickly found out these were fake, and decided to write one last email to him, saying that if I hadn't received a confirmation email by him the next day, I would contact the police. That didn't work, so I quickly noticed the cops, and filed a dispute at Paypal.
All I know is that the thief goes by the name of Christian Collard, his email address is cocoris@gmail.com, and I'm pretty sure this data is correct. The rest I leave for the police to figure all out to their amusement. Paypal offered an insurance of 66% of the artifact, so I hope the damage will be limited.
The next safety tips are free of charge : when buying stuff on Ebay, watch out for these points, which might ensure a more safe transaction :

• only buy from a seller which has lots of positive feedback. This ensures you're buying from someone more trustable.


• always pay with Paypal, and look out for items with a Paypal insurance which covers the buying price


• always contact the seller before paying. That way, you're sure his email account is at least correct

I recently noticed that the electrical socket of my now 8 year old Speedtouch ADSL modem seemed to have a crack in it. While pulling it out from the electricy net, it literally fell apart. Pushing it back into the power wasn't an option, I had no other choice than contacting Belgacom for a replacement of the socket. As the modem wasn't manufactered anymore, I had to pay for a new one. Grmbl...


One thing that struck me : I tried to telephone our local Belgacom shop, but nobody answered the call. I first thought it would be too busy in the shop, but after checking the website, it seemed that they were closed. Isn't it weird that a telecom giant doesn't install an automatic answering machine, noticing people of the opening hours of the shop ?

This is the 1000nd blogpost I'm creating in Drupal. There were many more, but most of them didn't survive the Postnuke-to-Drupal migration. I only wish I had some more time to blog, most of the posts are nowadays hush-hush written in a spare minute, something which hopefully doesn't reflect in the writing style.


Kudos to Dries for creating Drupal : it is both lightweight and full-featured, and these properties are in most blog engines mutually exclusive.

It's not the first time that the web is buzzing with rumours, but when it's about IBM shopping around to buy Sun, then I'm all ears. I still have a hard time believing this; both companies offer almost the same hardware product line :

• Servers : in the high-end range, Sun has almost killed its Sparc line with their Fujitsu mockup. In the low-end, Sun is pushing customers towards their AMD Solaris-x86 line. IBM has competing products with both Power and x86.


• OS : Sun has its Solaris Unix version, still worthy of 30% of the Unix market. Solaris-x86 is a strong competitor for Linux on Intel and AMD hardware.


• Tape : With the STK tape libraries, Sun owns the largest competitor in this branche.


• Storage : Sun offers mostly low-end to midrange (The Toro line looks *very* interesting) storage, so this could be an addition towards IBM storage line.


• Software : Sun owns Java (including GlassFish and Netbeans), so this is interesting for IBM, which has a good selling WebSphere product. MySQL might be interesting too.

As you can see, Sun and IBM have many products that are up to par, and are direct rivals. Buying Sun would only be interesting if IBM is planning to kill Suns product line. I don't know the height of the pile of money IBM is sitting on, but 6.5 billion dollar is a lot of money just to gain some more foot in the Unix market, which IBM is virtually reigning already.


Would this move be good for Linux ? I think so, the demise of Solaris on x86 could drive lots of people towards Linux. On the other hand, Scott McNealy declares that he rather would sell Sun to Microsoft than to see it fall under the feet of IBM...

Caol Ila (pronounced Kull-Eela) was a rather unknown Islay whisky to me, but apparently it is the largest distillery on Islay and one of the largest that Diageo owns. The bulk of its output goes to blends and since 1999, they have produced whisky with unpeated barley for a few months each year, until recently used exclusively for blending.


Color : pale yellow
Smell : A light smell of smoke & peat, followed rapidly by a blast of fruity sweetness.
Taste : Fruity, lots of apples, with a smokey aftertaste. Oily, reminds me of Bowmore, but less peaty and more sweet. Some complexity hidden deep inside the clash between fruit and smoke, with an undefineable taste (enveloppe glue ?).


Surprisingly strong, but if you like a sweet punch in the face, this could be your favorite dram.

Kan devolgende keer me iemand tegenhouden wanneer ik me met mijn zatte kloten in een weddenschap stort die ik absoluut niet kan winnen ? Het resultaat : een voettocht van Leuven naar Scherpenheuvel - zo'n 25 km - die ik in zo'n 4 uurtjes hoopte door te jagen, en zonder enige voorbereiding. Het werden er 4,5 uren, iets langer wegens :

• De Roeselberg die ik na 1,5h moest opklimmen, en toch ietske steiler was dan verwacht (met de auto ziet die er platter uit, ja)


• enkele fikse blaren die na 2h de wandeling pijnlijk maakten


• het voorspelde -volgens de KMI- zonnige weer, waarbij ik het laatste uur in de gietende regen doorploeterde (zonder K-wayke natuurlijk, ah ja, het ging zonnig weer worden)


• de man met de hamer die na 3h mijn pad kruiste, toevallig net toen het volle bak begon te regenen

Respect voor

• StuBru, die de tocht heel wat aangenamer maakte


• mezelf natuurlijk ;)


• de mannen die de dodentocht uitzingen (80 of 100km ?), toch niet direct aan mij besteed

Sinds vorige week mag onze hond van de puppy klas naar de A-klas. Gedaan met vrolijk spelen met andere honden, de A-klas is andere koek : vanaf nu worden alle bevelen erin gepompt op militaristische wijze. Sta ! Zit ! Af ! tot we er zelf horendul van worden. Bedoeling hiervan is om de hond zonder gebaren, en liefst vanaf het eerste commando te doen gehoorzamen. Pure obedience training, zodat de hond stilaan evolueert naar een dier dat onmiddellijk luistert naar de bevelen van het baasje.

Waar vind je de grootste hondenshow ter wereld ? In het hondengekke Engeland natuurlijk. De voorbije 4 dagen vond in Birmingham het jaarlijkse Crufts festival plaats, waarbij zo'n 30000 honden geshowd werden, en wij waren er ook. Nu moet ik zeggen dat ik nogal sceptisch was : iedereen weet dat rashonden zwaar lijden onder inteelt, en dat je eigenlijk beter bent met een doogewone 'stratier'. Massale, en dan vooral Engelse, hondenshows waarbij het beeld van de overgecoiffeerde poedels je voor de ogen staan, is niet aan mij besteed. En soms lijkt het alsof sommige rassen zo onnatuurlijk mogelijk voor de dag moeten komen.


Maar ik moet toegeven dat Crufts beter meeviel dan oorspronkelijk gedacht. Ik zag niet zozeer een hondenfokker industrie, maar eerder een heleboel mensen die het beste voorhadden voor hun viervoetige vrienden. En naast het showen van honden (eerder het saaiere gedeelte van Crufts), kon men vooral genieten van wat voor mij echt telt : het echte werken met honden, waarbij men vooral de gehoorzaamheid en de intelligentie van de dieren moest bewijzen.


Hierbij een kleine selectie van onze foto's.

Mobile people as we are, we find ourselves pushing more and more functionality to our mobile phone. Take a look at my own Nokia N80 : it is my mobile, PDA, MP3 player, PIM and GPS (and probably some stuff I forget right now). As versatile my phone is, there is still one functionality I miss in it, and that is not the little device its fault : enterprise calendar. It's very handy when you decide to go to work later, that you know what meetings are planned that day. That way, you can give the people involved a notice you won't make it, or at least will show up later.


There are plenty applications around that do this trick for you, at least if you have the chance (?) of working with Outlook at work. At our place, we're the victim of the GUI nightmare called Lotus Notes. And there seems no application that does the syncing with Symbian, and if there is one, little chance I can get it installed on my desktop at work. So I needed an extra man in the middle, and that is Google Calendar.


CalSyncS60 is a Symbian application that syncs your Google calendar automagically with your Symbian one, either by 3G or by entering the hotspot of your choice. That leaves me only with the task of getting my Lotus calendar into Google. No chance with Domino 6.5 (the export function gives very weird results), but in later releases, this should be possible. There is ATM no option left but manually entering my enterprise calendar into Google calendar (I'm not a meeting animal, so this isn't such a daunting task anyway).

It's been a long time since I reviewed some whisky. You might wonder if I had gone up the wrong path : converted by the H2O brigade, having replaced my daily dram by a hot coco at the evening fireplace ? No my friends, the truth is that I have been low indeed on booze, and reached back to my usual medicines : I received a special edition of the Tullamore Dew, bottled into a ceramic crock, and I spent some care on Scapa & Highland Park, the usual stuff.


But recently I decided to give some of my attention to The Black Grouse, a product from the Famous Grouse - the number #1 selling blend in Scotland... and in Sweden (which has a pretty sophisticated whisky market, apparently). The Black Grouse is a Scotch blend derived from the Famous Grouse, with some of the finest Islay malt whiskies.


Color : dark gold
The nose : malty, some bonfire smoke and a little peat.
The taste : malty again, quite some peat, medicinal, surprisingly sour, with lots of hints of fruitiness. In the aftertaste again some smoke.


The verdict : I allways say "Better a brilliant blend than a mediocre malt". And the Black Grouse is brilliant. I must admit I don't like the sour taste, but blended in water or coke, this makes a magic drink.