Today I'm happy to launch the new version of my weblog. (Oh and also the rest of the website, although some content still needs to be updated.) This is version 3 of the weblog, not counting my very first weblog at blogger.com. Although it's only been 1.5 year since I switched from Nucleus CMS to Wordpress, I once again switched over to another CMS: Drupal. Not because I was unhappy with Wordpress (it's a really nice system), but Drupal gives me a lot more flexibility. Flexibility which I needed to implement some new ideas I had for this version of the weblog and my website in general.

I have always maintained a few different sites, running on a plethora of applications. I had my photo website (fotos.budts.be), which ran on ZenPhoto; I had lightyear.be with the activity stream, running on Gregarius with some self-hacked ruby code to write the final stream; Then I had my cv-site (budts.be/jeroen), which was mainly just static html …

When we got our new laptops at work (Dell Latitude E6510) we had some various problems while installing our preferred Linux distros on it.

The first problem which we all had was trying to get the screen to work. I could get it to work by booting with the following kernel params xforcevesa nomodeset (I also removed the default quiet splash). Now I just run with only nomodeset, which works without problems for me, but without 3D. Jan has compiled a patched kernel for Ubuntu with 3D support but with less colors.

Then the second problem: scrolling with the touchpad didn't work. To fix this I ran the following commands:

cd /tmp/
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/57421117/patch-dell-e6510
sudo apt-get build-dep --no-install-recommends linux-image-$(uname -r)
apt-get source linux-image-$(uname -r)
cd linux-2.6.35/drivers/input/mouse/
patch -p0 < /tmp/patch-dell-e6510 
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` psmouse.ko
sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo cp psmouse.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/
sudo modprobe psmouse …

Nadat we vorig jaar een kijkje hadden genomen in India en Nepal wilden we nu wel eens meer richting Amerika trekken. Ook wilden we eens een groepreis proberen. We hadden in India gemerkt dat we toch wel tijd verloren aan het zoeken naar de juiste plekken en we toch niet overal zo direct onze draai vonden.

We hadden al van verschillende mensen vele positieve dingen gehoord over Djoser en zij bieden sinds dit jaar een 17-daagse rondreis door Guatemala aan. Ons eerste plan was Mexico, maar als we het aanbod bekeken leek Guatemala ons aantrekkelijker omdat het zowel echte Maya-cultuur heeft, maar ook jungle en mooie natuur, zodat het, zo hoopten we, een gevarrieerde reis zou worden. En dat werd het ook!

Hieronder het verslag van onze reis naar Guatemala (en een klein stukje Honduras), die we deden in oktober 2010. Onze groep bestond uit 5 Belgen en 5 Nederlanders (waarvan eigenlijk 1 iemand van Spanje kwam) als je de reisbegeleidster meerekende. Het verslag is geen doorlopend verhaal, eerder een …

Today we saw the release of Ubuntu 10.10, codenamed Maverick Meerkat. Because I had some time today I immediately decided to upgrade my laptop. As usual the upgrade succeeded without too much trouble. Clicking a few buttons, letting the computer work for about an hour, reboot, and you are pretty much done.

Except for the few small things which break during upgrade. Out of experience from upgrading previous versions I know there are always a few small things you will have to fix. So here are the steps I did after the upgrade:

• The installer disables all your extra PPA's, so when the upgrade has finished I re-enabled those and ran sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade again.
• I quickly discovered that Guake didn't use my nice UTF-8 prompt anymore. This turns out to be a bug in VTE. The TERM variable isn't set correctly when launching Guake, so it acts as a dumb terminal. To fix this I changed the method of launching Guake in my startup script …

While VIM certainly isn't an IDE, there are a lot of plugins in existence to make it more IDE-like. Although I have been working a lot inside IDE's the past few years, I don't really need all those fancy IDE features (and the bloat that comes with it). That's one of the many things I like so much about Vim, I can just add the features I need to the editor. So while there are certainly at least a few plugins to work with projects inside Vim, I came up with my own system for working with "projects" (call them "light-projects" if you wish). One small note: For the moment this method suits my needs, but since I'm only using Vim for about two months as my main editor, this might change obviously.

Basically, my solutions is based on an autocommand for every 'project' and the command-t plugin. Oh, and sessions as well. The autocommand detects when a file is read (or created) inside the project-directory. In this case, it …

Not long after I switched to Linux I started modifying my .bashrc file. In a .bashrc file you can set options for Bash, add aliases, configure your Bash prompt etc. When I decided to start using Vim as my main editor a few weeks ago, I also started tinkering with the .vimrc file. The .vimrc file is, similar to the .bashrc file, the place-to-be to configure Vim.

Obviously I wanted to share all these config-files between my work machine and my personal computer. That is why I set up a Git repository on my Dreamhost webspace. With most of your important config-files in a Git repository you can easily share your config between multiple computers and you get a history of your modifications as a free bonus.

Because I want to keep it clear which files are in the Git repo and which files are not, I just created a directory in my homedirectory called 'scripts' (so at ~/scripts/). Everything in that directory is in Git, everything outside the directory …

When I started working on my first PHP project at Inuits I had to decide which editor or IDE to use. Obviously while I was still working in the .NET-world I used Visual Studio, just as almost everybody else. However I also used jEdit at home for PHP, Ruby etc. I always felt that learning a general purpose editor, and learning it very well, is more interesting than learning an IDE for one specific platform (VS.NET in this case).

One of my new colleagues recommended me to use NetBeans for PHP development, so I had a look at it. While I'm sure it has a lot to offer, it just didn't feel like the tool I wanted to use. Obviously I had also installed jEdit. While I have always loved jEdit, somehow I wasn't convinced anymore. I also had a look at gEdit, which certainly has potential if you install some extra plugins and configure it, but compared to other editors and IDE's it seems to be rather limited …

As you might have read on my Twitter, I got married two weeks ago. My wife - it still feels strange to say :) - is the most wonderful girl on this planet, and far beyond.

Our marriage really was a day which i will remember for the rest of my life. Everything was perfect. Obviously a few small things went wrong, like arriving at the church without the bridal bouquet (doh!), but we really enjoyed the day!

For those interested, our wedding dance was Beste Banaan by Kommil Foo. Our DJ was DJ Patrice, who really did a wonderful job! A DJ who gets nearly everybody on the dancefloor knows his art! Even people which I never expected on the dancefloor suddenly were shaking their butts off. The people from De Vleeshoeve served us one of the best BBQs I have ever tasted. Also the icecream from Gelati Van Houcke was really tasty. And thanks to some friends, our reception also was great (thx guys!!)!

I'm becoming an Inuit

While most of …

Een paar weken geleden ontdekte ik de site BandsInTown. Op deze website vind je enorm veel optreden van groepen en muzikanten. Niet enkel optreden in de VS, maar ook in Belgë en Nederland. Maar de echte 'killer'-feature van de website, is dat je hem aan je last.fm profiel kan linken. Op die manier kan je dus door gewoon naar je favoriete muziek te luisteren en te scrobblen helemaal automatisch geregeld een mailtje krijgen met optredens in je buurt. Het duurde dus maar 5 minuten tot ik zag dat Avishai Cohen op 4 februari optrad in De Roma.

Avishai Cohen is een Jazz bassist uit Israël en maakt echt enorm goede en moderne Jazz (dat is natuurlijk mijn persoonlijke mening). Ik heb de muziek van Cohen ook toevallig leren kennen dankzij een foutje van de Media Markt. In hun systeem om CD's voor te beluisteren stond "Aurora" verwisseld met een andere CD, die ik op dat moment wilde beluisteren. Hoewel ik Aurora toen niet gekocht heb (wegens al een te …