Trying to Hit the Nail on the Head

James Randi on TED.com

admin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:32:03 +0000

Here’s a TED video you really should see

Backup for Road Warriors

admin — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:42:59 +0000

Here’s another tool you should be using, if you ask me, especially if your carrying around a laptop containing months (even years) of valuable information, like I do. At Mozy you can get a simple but effective tool that creates a backup of your important files on the Mozy servers. The free account has 2 GB of space, which should be enough for the important data, but there’s an unlimited account as well…

Mind you, if you’re really paranoia (or if your boss makes you behave like that) do keep in mind that your files are now on a server that is not under your control…

You Send It using YouSendIt

admin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:36:28 +0000

Yet another nice productivity tool: at YouSendIt you can send large files up to 2 GB to anyone having an email address. The files are stored for a limited time (7 days) on their servers and can be downloaded via a URL that is sent to the receiver.

I wouldn’t use it to send sentitive information (unless you encrypt them yourself first), but even the free version is a nice solution for sending files larger than your mailbox can handle.

whatyareadin?

admin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:02:14 +0000

I’m always looking for more information/knowlegde – I admit it, I’m an info-junkie – and use goodreads to keep track of the books I still want to read.

If you want to see what I’m currently reading (yes, I’m always kind of reading more than one book at a time), have a look at my profile. Feel free to connect as a friend so I can see what you’re reading as well!

Poductive Fingers

admin — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:48:41 +0000

Here’s a nice tool I discovered, thanks to Fré.
Fingertips makes starting the programs you always need a lot faster.

Management Pocketbooks

admin — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:19:53 +0000

I find the following two series of pocket books very interesting for the young professional. They’re short (about 100 pages), low cost (about 5 to 10 EUR), have interesting content (e.g. Making Presentations, Coaching, 360 Degree Feedback, …) and they usually contain just enough models, tips and tricks to get you started (or to improve yourself). If you really want the details on one of these models, … you can then switch to the more traditional management books, which are a lot bigger, more expensive and cover less, but more into detail.

I really can recommend having a look at them:

Management Pocketbooks
Essential Managers Series, published by DK Publishing, Inc.

But, of course, they don’t look as good on your book shelve. :icon_wink:

Moving my cheese

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:03:52 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted a new entry on my blog, but a lot has changed since I last wrote one. (The blog entry about patterns was an unfinished one, that was published/released by accident.)

In November, I finally !) moved from my flat to the house I’ve been renovating the last few years and that same month I stoped working for AE and started as “Applications Group Manager – Java Business Development” at Dolmen.

And my cheese is moving still: last December Dolmen and Real announced that they are merging into RealDolmen, which will be the reference ICT provider in Belgium.
If everything goes well, our Java Competence Center will grow from 120+ FTEs (Dolmen) to 200+ FTEs (RealDolmen) in the coming months.

Exciting times are ahead of us!

Patterns Everywhere!

admin — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:01:01 +0000

Patterns and especially design patterns have been around for a long time.

In software “design patterns” became a household term when “The Gang of Four” (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralf Johnson and John Vlissides) published their book “Design Patterns – Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” more than 10 years ago. This book not only lay the foundation for a set of design patterns in software, but it also described how to best define and describe these patterns.

But, patterns have been around for much longer than since 1995! Since the beginning of software there have been books about how to best solve a given problem.

Get Your Statistics Right

admin — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:21:31 +0000

A few days ago, I blogged about TED. Today, I saw one presentation, that convinced me, I know not that much about statistics as I thought I did. (Mind you, I have a Masters Degree in Computer Sciences and, prior to that, I studied Latin-Mathematics).

Watch Peter Donnelly on how juries are fooled by statistics and I’m sure only a few of us will get his answers right.

Feed the Brain

admin — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:07:08 +0000

If you’re like me, happy without a TV and you don’t like most of the videos on YouTube, this might be a nice tip: on TED you can find 150+ recordings of the presentations given by some of the greatest minds of our times during the Technology, Entertainment and Design conferences.

Most of them are only 18 minutes long, so even with a 21th century attention span disorder, you can sit through these in one session.

I haven’t seen all of them – at the rate I’m going that won’t take long – but for now I really liked John Maeda on the simple life, Jane Goodall on what separates us from the apes, Helen Fisher tells us why we love, cheat and especially Dan Dennett on dangerous memes.

By the way, most of them are not IT related… but I guess that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. :icon_wink: