19 December - It's definitely too early to wish anyone a merry christmas, so I won't at this time. Still it's clear in everything that the end of the year approaches and for the most part I do like this month. Which immediately makes me jump to the conclusion that I like just about any part of the year, which isn't true of course. Still, I'm feeling good at the moment so why worry too much ?

3 December - The final month of the year is upon us once again, darkness enfolds us so much earlier than just a few months before, and so on and so on. In the meantime I've written a 50000 word novel in 30 days. Impressed ? You'd better be. Although actually it wasn't as big an effort as it might seem. I wrote for about 3 to 4 hours every day and the result is not very good anyway. But it's finished and that's what counts.

27 November - Life is progressing slowly again and once more I feel like writing a few words here. It's another typical Wednesday evening, which means I'm sitting behind a computer some of the time and am watching Champions League football the rest of the time. At least, it would be a typical evening if it weren't for the fact that I'm sick. Nothing serious, but annoying nevertheless. It's going better at the moment than earlier today, but I can't wait for it to be over (slightly impatient I guess).

22 November - Last Monday Mayflower (the band I play in) performed for the second time in its existence. We played at the KultuurKaffee of the VUB university in Brussels. The room wasn't packed, but the crowd that was there seemed to enjoy the concert. And so did we, especially towards the end. We were initially thinking we wouldn't have enough time to play our entire set, but as the third band failed to show up, we had plenty of time and played more songs than we had planned. All in all it was a succesful evening.

13 November - Ok, it's been a really long time since I last updated this diary. There is only one reason for this: I changed computers quite a bit and never got around to installing E-OfficeDirect on any of them. So I had no way of actually uploading any new content. But now I'm back again. One thing I'm doing at the moment is writing a novel. There's a challenge on www.nanowrimo.org to write a novel containing at least 50,000 words. Oh, and of course you can't write the same word 50,000 times. Besides, why would you want to do that ? There are no prizes, just honour at stake. I've gotten about 20,000 words written down at the moment, so I'm on schedule (count it if you want to). Now all I need to do is keep finding the inspiration I'll inevitable need. Oh, and the band I play in now really exists outside our rehearsal room as well. We thought up a really cool name (ok, just ordinary cool then) and we've got a website of our own: www.mayflower-music.be. Be sure to check it out when you have the time.

7 August - I came to the conclusion that a program I once wrote to check on the availability of domain names, is now useless to me. This is because for the Belgian domain (.be), you can only do one query every 36 seconds (or some number close to that). The whole purpose of the program was to automate that process, and obviously you can't really do 100, 50 or even 10 queries when you have to wait more than half a minute between them. So that's it, the program is finished and dead. I was planning to offer it for free download, but now the drive to continue improving it is gone. It's really a pity because it was a nice and especially a stable program. Ah well, the Ides of March... Or in this case, the policies of dns.be.

25 July - It's been a month without updates to the website. And I still don't have any inspiration on what to write here. I could say that I got a new laptop, but that would be lame. Or mention that I couldn't get into the computer that houses the files for this website because I forgot the password, but that doesn't say too much good about me. So I'll just say nothing.

25 June - So here I am, watching the first semi final of the world cup football (soccer for any Americans out there). I've sort of lost intrest in this tournament since the Belgians were defeated by Brazil. Before that, I watched nearly every game. But now it doesn't seem to be as interesting as it used to be.

12 June - Must be because the wheather is warmer and sunnier now, but I haven't gotten around to updating this diary for a while now. Not that that matters. I've been writing scenarios for comic books for the past half year. One at a time and none are finished right now. That's not bad, as long as I get back to them soon enough. But I like to work out ideas I have and make them more than ideas. The question remains of course, are they any good? Time will tell, I guess. Last weekend saw the first rehearsal of a new band. I'm telling you this because I play bass guitar in that band. Before you ask, there's no name yet. There used to be a name but it turned out to be taken already. And yes, it went well and yes, I made a bunch of mistakes.

3 June - Summer is definitely here now. Although today it seems to be a bit more clouded over than the past few days, it's still very warm. Makes it a bit more difficult to get work done, but I'll manage. If you hadn't noticed yet (as if), the world cup football (soccer) has started. The first game of the day is on television from 8.30 am. While this sounds bad at first, for me at least it has a good effect. I'm up early nowadays. Well, early compared to when I used to get up. And that's a good thing (in case you think otherwise). Now if I can only make sure I go to bed early enough as well...

15 May - The past few weeks I've been having something I'm now calling "mac fever". The basic symptoms are very clear. Visiting www.apple.com more than once each day, firing up www.google.com with search phrases like "iBook rumor", checking www.macslash.com and www.macrumors.com every 10 minutes, stuff like that. The reason for all this is simple: I'd like to get an iBook. I'm sure you've seen them before, they're small, white laptops with very nice specs. I saw one when I visited Paul Kellett (mda) last month, he has one for developing the mac versions of his plugins. From the moment I saw it, I knew I wanted it. Anyway, this fever reached a new high yesterday. There had been a rumor that Apple would be introducing new hardware on May 14th, probably a rackmount server and maybe a new iBook as well. Of course I was very interested in the latter part. So I spent most of the day checking some mac sites to see if anything had been announced yet. At a certain point I noticed the "Apple event" had begun, but there would be no live coverage. Then it turned out there was live coverage after all (wireless networking is nice). So I followed the event by reloading a webpage every 5 minutes (and sometimes 3 or 2 or even 1). After almost 2 hours, it was over. No new iBook. Needless to say, I was disappointed. I had gotten into a spiral going from "who knows" to "they WILL announce new iBooks". I can tell you, it's not a nice state to be in. You can't really do anything else anymore, just thinking about one thing. Tunnel vision I suppose. Or maybe it should be called Tunnel thought in this case. So what's the moral of this story? Don't get too worked up over stuff. It's just stuff after all. As for me, I'll probably be getting an iBook at some point in the future. And checking Apple's website from time to timein the meantime , trying to stay out of the grip of the mac fever.

8 May - I've been to London last month. I went to see Angus Hewlett's band, called Square Hip. I had a great time, for multiple reasons. First of all, there was nice music. I really love that band. And of course I was enjoying my first ever visit to London. I've always said I wanted to go to London sometime, but I never got around to it. And now I have. That said, I'm not sure if I'd want to live in London. Maybe I'm just too conservative after all, maybe a 1-day visit doesn't really give you a good impression of a city. I'm probably going back at some point, maybe see a different part of town (I mainly visited Camden Town this time).

7 May - I'm a bit too tired to really write anything here at the moment. I just rebuilt the entire site, after I lost it in a hd crash a while ago. This is the main reason it wasn't being updated for so long.

17 March - I do enjoy Sundays at the moment. There's something about a day when you can do whatever you want, when you have no obligations whatsoever. Especially if the sun shines on such a day.

7 March - Work is going well, as always when a project (or more than one) is nearly finished and only some small bits and pieces have to be sorted out. Of course when they're done I have to start on new stuff and that will bring all sorts of problems again, but I'll worry about that later. Now's the time to rejoice and be happy. Or something like that. Spring is drawing near. The wheather is fairly good on some days, with a lot of sunlight and blue(ish) skies. Spring is definitely my favourite season. Fall is nice too and summer is, well, summer. Winter has its downsides. I like winter when it snows. Snow creates a magical atmosphere. Maybe it's just me thinking back of my childhood and that winter when it had really snowed very much and there was snow everywhere and ... Ok, back to reality.

1 March - So there's this movie on tv. It's about kids in a public school, participating in some knowledge/intelligence competition with other schools. And of course their score is low compared to the rich private school. Through some coincidence they get their hands on the questions for the state finals. And you'll never guess, they decide to cheat. Bigtime. And they win the state finals, everybody happy, movie over. Well, not exactly. Although there's no proof, these kids are disqualified based on statistics and rumours. So here's today's big question: can you exclude someone from a competition based on statistics ? Cause no matter how small a chance is according to statistics, it's still there. Not that I lay awake nights pondering this thought of course.

18 February - I hate being sick. Having to cough all the time, my eyes hurt and I have a constant headache. Occasional dizziness as well of course. I'm looking forward to being all better again, really.

15 February - It's official. I'm now an inhabitant of Hasselt. First time in my life that I really moved to another city. My home town is no longer my home. Weird feeling. It's not like I don't know my new city btw, I went to school here. But it's different now. Now it isn't just some city I happen to be in, no, it's my city. I'll probably get more used to it, which would be a pity. But I guess I'll just have to move to another city when that happens...

4 February - I've moved into my apartment. I still haven't quite decided whether it's exactly the right size or just that bit too small. The kitchen is definitely on the small side though. I like a big kitchen. It's more fun to cook in a kitchen where you can actually prepare vegetables and cook some stuff at the same time. But maybe that's just me. I love my new desk though. It's spacious. I can fit all my computers on it and still have some room to spare. Of course I've got enough things (small and not so small) to fill it, so the end result isn't much different from the old desk. Just that there's more stuff on it. If you ever find yourself in a cd shop, see if they have Mauro - Songs from a bad hat. Mauro is the singer, and the rest is the title of the cd. It's definitely worth the purchase. I'm not sure if they even sell this cd outside Belgium, but who knows...

11 January - Today I bought a fridge. Not just any fridge, no. No, I got a big fridge. So I can put in some food. And something to drink. And some more to drink. And, well, a bit more to drink. And some food. Is it full yet ? No way ! So, more drinks and some food too. And, well ... you get the picture I guess. Now all I have to do is decide on where to put it. Small apartment, big fridge. I'm not so sure if that's altogether a good combination. But we'll see. And I got a teensy weensy midi keyboard. It has 2 octaves and 8 assignable controllers. And it fits on my desk next to the computer. A bit less clumsy than the previous one. It only had 2 octaves more, granted, but it was much wider. And it definitely is a hell of a lot smaller than my Roland synth. It has 5 octaves, but also some controls on the left side of the keyboard, so it's wider still. The funny part here is that I don't really play keyboard or piano at the moment. I used to play keyboard in a band, but that ended at some point. So I switched to bassguitar. I took lessons, so I can now play reasonably well. I still have to practice a lot to actually become somewhat good at it. Maybe I should take keyboard lessons too...

5 January - Euro fever. Everyday there are reports on the news about how much we all love the Euro. Or not, depending. All in all it seems that no one really objects to the new currency. And maybe for the first time there's a bit of a European togetherness building up. Which I feel would be a good thing. Personally I got rid of my last Belgian francs on 31 December. I bought a cd that cost exactly the amount of money I had left. And a very good cd it is too. Ozark Henry's first cd, very nice. His last one is also very nice, but my brother has already bought it so I am doubting whether I will too or not (so many good cd's still to buy). More and more furniture is arriving in my apartment, so the day that I'll be able to move into it isn't too far off. Still quite a bit of work to do of course, but I'm taking it easy and just doing things as I feel like doing them. Yesterday I moved a sofa into it, which was a bit tricky. It wouldn't fit into the elevator, so we had to move it up two floors by stair. Which was also a very narrow fit. But looking back at it, it was pretty trouble free. And I finally discovered that the QuickReport components are still included with Delphi. So I've been able to make my video database application print again. Just finished updating it and looking at the new printed list as I write this ...

2 January - Like last year, I recorded a lot of movies from the tv the past weeks. The result is that my videotape collection has grown from 305 to 330 tapes since 24 December. And I'm not done yet. I've got 6 more films listed until Friday, and there are still a few to follow next week. To be able to achieve this feat, I had to use up to 3 videorecorders at a time. Not that this is a real problem, I've got 4 I can use most of the time. The tale of the vcr's is a lot like that of my computers. From time to time my parents would buy a new vcr, without the old one being broken. A few years ago I "acquired" these old machines. The only problem now is that I'd like to put all these movies (about 300 now) on a medium that doesn't decay as quickly as a videotape. So we're talking cd or dvd here. However much I'd like to get a dvd recorder, they're a bit over my budget at the moment. So I need to record all those videotapes to the computer first (that's where my new videocapture card comes in) and then write them to cdr. Unfortunately that's a lot of work and I haven't gotten round to doing even one tape so far. So one of my new year's resolutions has got to be this: that I will begin copying those movies to cdr. What seemed to be an empty year, open to anything I'd like to do, is all of a sudden filling fast. Well, back to the bassguitar it is ...

1 January - I spent the transition from the old to the new year working. Not because I had to, but simply because I had finally found that elusive bug that had been haunting my dreams and unfortunately also my real life. Turns out there were 3 bugs in 3 separate but related dlls. So that has been fixed, and today I'm doing absolutely nothing. Except of course writing this right now. So what do I expect from the new year? As any other year, I expect to finally and once and for all be completely trouble free. NOT. Not that I'm being pessimistic: I'm moving to a new apartment soon, my work is going very well thank you very much and I've got a few hobbies I like very much. Of course there are things that could be better, but let's work on those and we'll see where we end up. In the meantime I plan to have a lot of fun doing the things I do. In short, I have a strong suspicion life will progress in much the same manner as it always has, and I like that manner for the most part. So fare thee well and don't do anything you'll regret for too long a time. Work is going well, as always when a project (or more than one) is nearly finished and only some small bits and pieces have to be sorted out. Of course when they're done I have to start on new stuff and that will bring all sorts of problems again, but I'll worry about that later. Now's the time to rejoice and be happy. Or something like that. Spring is drawing near. The wheather is fairly good on some days, with a lot of sunlight and blue(ish) skies. Spring is definitely my favourite season. Fall is nice too and summer is, well, summer. Winter has its downsides. I like winter when it snows. Snow creates a magical atmosphere. Maybe it's just me thinking back of my childhood and that winter when it had really snowed very much and there was snow everywhere and ... Ok, back to reality.

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