Things I did today (24)

1. Alarm clocks went off around 7am this morning, stayed in bed till 7.45am. A bit earlier than usual, but still not early enough to kick some ass!
2. Worked hard on 2 big use-cases, wanted to 4 in total today… Got to a third one though, which is pretty central.
3. The back-channel in a 100 heads company is pretty interesting. Too bad it takes so long to get the information/grieves from the back-channel to the chiefs. And it's so depressing if things don't get resolved and keep coming back, it really is.
4. Listened to that Bottin dj set and I'm now listening to a Bicep dj set. Recommended!
5. Bart Lapers hinted his Twitter followers for a Frankfurt – Papeete deal. 916 euro for the flight only, which is pretty cheap (they normally cost 1500 euro). Too bad it'll cost at least 1000 euro more for hotels and entertainment and suddenly you're spending more than a month's worth of wages for some island travel. I need to get rich soon!

One can dream, one can only dream.

Things I did today (23)

1. I’m getting better at the getting up early part.
2. Finished 2 use-cases, wireframed another one to something more simple and elegant. I strive for elegant solutions, but it takes time to make a solution as elegant as possible. Too bad life sometimes can’t wait for an elegant solution.
3. I need some sun and Brussels Airlines gave – like yesterday – a 2 hour during 40% sale on their website. 40% excluding taxes, ofcourse. I have a 4 day weekend beginning of February so I small city trip to Southern Europe might be interesting. Too bad the only real cheap flights were for Barcelona and Wolfram Alpha gives this as weather statistics… Such a no go.
4. Listened to some music. There’s a lot of music out there. Eli Escobar released his new EP Work It, Oliver (not to be mistaken with Oliver $) got an unlimited Soundcloud and The Magician released his Magic Tape Nineteen.
5. Oh, and I got compliments on my writing style.

Something I don’t like about the Lumia 800

I can’t use it on Windows (Vista) without installing device drivers. Microsoft probably wants me to Bing it. Or read the manual (I only opened the box and took the Lumia from the top and closed the box again).

Things I did today (22)

In short: I wasn’t really productive today.

1. Got up at around 8.15am, ate an orange and went to the garage with my car.
2. Jogged back home (4k).
3. Read the newspaper.
4. Jogged to the garage (4k).
5. Got my car back for 170 euros. Yearly maintenance…
6. Did, uhm, stuff. I’m the procrastination master.
7. Studied the Slim framework for a while.
8. Went to Ghent for the weekly #geekrun. Since it’s only the two of us, I guess we can rename it to #learningmoment. It’s fascinating how we discuss what’s happening in our lives on a more abstract level. What’s actually happening, why are people reacting the way we do and what can we learn from it so we can change people’s reaction?
9. Bought Good Strategy, Bad Strategy from the iBookstore. Does the iBookstore have a monopoly on the iPad, or is it possible to buy ebooks from, e.g. Amazon?

I wasn’t productive because I wanted to progress the codebase of our web app.

I might switch to a Windows Phone

(The original title of this blogpost was “Apps for the Lumia 800″.)

In the past I’ve been saying the “but Microsoft’s Marketplace only has 50.000 apps, it stinks”-argument is mute. I still hold to that opinion. I’ll explain why below.

I’m an avid BlackBerry user. It turns out that BlackBerry is often neglected, although we – see what I did there? – have an official Twitter app, an official Facebook app, an official FourSquare app, an official Shazam app and an official LinkedIn app (although that one sucks). There’s Google Sync to sync my address book and calendar with the cloud. They even got Evernote, Whatsapp and Google Latitude for my navigation needs.

Runkeeper doesn’t run on BlackBerry, but that’s a decision the app creator makes, not the platform! I use Runtastic on BlackBerry, which is a bit more cross-platform than Runkeeper.

That makes a list of 10 apps I regularly tend to use. These are my killer apps. (For BlackBerry there’s also the amazingly fast keyboard and its messaging apps like Mail and BlackBerry Messenger, which doesn’t count as network traffic.)

So, let’s check which of my killer apps also exist in Microsoft’s Marketplace for Windows Phone:

1. Official Twitter app: check. BlackBerry’s version wins though (especially with the push notifications).
2. Official Facebook app: check. It’s even got Facebook Places to work.
3. Official Foursquare app: check.
4. Official Shazam app: check.
5. Official LinkedIn app: fail. It’s not in the Marketplace, but Windows Phone 7 offers integration with it through the Persons Hub. I haven’t tested that feature though.
6. Google Sync: check. Feature of the OS itself.
7. Evernote: check.
8. Whatsapp: check.
9. Google Latitude: not in the Marketplace. Now, I use Google Latitude mainly as a navigation software, not to know where my friends are. Nokia provides their own – free – navigation software, even with voice turn-by-turn navigation.
10. Runtastic: check.

So that’s 8,5 out of 10. Not bad! And the UX of these apps is most of the times a lot more pleasant than on the other platforms.

Oh, and I like how the Metro UI poses the screen of the phone as an actual window to the canvas apps are drawing on.

I think today was the first day I started to consider switching from BlackBerry to a Windows Phone. (Perhaps my subconscious fell in the “ooh, shiny!” trap.)

Things I did today (21)

3 weeks in and still doing this. Boya!

1. Woke up and arrived at work at a decent hour. Talked with the boss about the project, we’re on the limit of the schedule.
2. Watched tv. I don’t do this that often. One house, 2 tv’s, 5 people. I try to not spend too much time watching crap.
3. Got my Moo cards. They’re just business cards, but Facebook & Moo give you 50 cards for free if you switch to the Facebook Timeline. I actually hesitated a long time before switching to the Timeline.
4. Installed Whatsapp on the Lumia 800. Used the sim card I don’t use often. It imported contacts from my other cellphone (which syncs through Google Sync, Facebook and Twitter). So now there’s probably some of my work colleagues seeing a “boskabout” in their Whatsapp contact list.

Uh. Oh.

Things I did today (20)

1. DJ’ed with Mart at Tijuana. Loved it, we played an hour longer than we originally wanted to. Funny how the decompression kicks in after a set.
2. Slept till noon, had chicken and fries for breakfast. I’d guess it’s healthier than coke and gin in Vegas. Less rock & roll tho…
3. Learned some skills for the web app I’m developing. Need to get in touch with the team mates soon. Communication is hard, even in the 21th century.
4. Speaking of communication, Barcelona’s calling.
5. Created a planning for a project at work. Which shouldn’t be done by me, but hey, someone’s got to do it.

Tango

Het was deze namiddag cross in Hoogerheide en tijdens het zappen na de aankomst waren we op France 3 beland. Showcase van wat gedans. Een koppel deed de rumba op James Blake’s Limit To Your Love. Raar om te zien, maar blijkbaar kan het.

De dans erna was wat anders: de tango! De man komt alleen de dansvloer op en zoekt zijn blondine die blijkbaar op de schoot van een andere man zit.

Hij grijpt haar bij haar lange blonde krullen en trekt haar de dansvloer op. Ze hebben een kleine woordenwisseling, zij mept hem in zijn gezicht et la danse commence.

Het straffe aan de tango is blijkbaar dat ze elkaar zo goed als nooit, maar dan ook nooit, in de ogen kijken. Ik vind dat straf ja. Maar ik ben dan ook geen kenner.

 

Things I did yesterday (19)

1. Slept till noon.
2. Procrastinated.
3. Played around with that Lumia 800. It’s good but not perfect (like any other phone). I like how it introduces new ways of doing things on a phone.
4. Went to Ghent for a housewarming.

Huizen & belastingen

U zo af en toe eens bezighouden met huizen te kopen en zo, dat verankert uw rijkheidsgevoel altijd stevig in de grond. Niet dat ik al huizen koop, laat staan één, maar ik hou mijn ogen toch al eens open. En dan ween ik wat omdat het zo duur is. Gelukkig is de staat er nog!

Ik zeg gelukkig, want via de belastingen laat de overheid toe om wat te recupereren van het geld dat ge aan de banken geeft om uw lening te vergoeden. Een rekenvoorbeeldje:

1. Stel, je krijgt wat geld van je ouders en moet maar 100.000 euro meer lenen om je huis te kunnen kopen.
2. Je kijkt eens rond op het internet, en je twijfelt tussen een vaste rentevoet op 20, 25 of 30 jaar. Dan bedraagt – bij BNP Paribas Fortis – de maandelijkse (jaarlijkse) aflossing 666,82 (8.001,84), 603,15 (7.237,8) respectievelijk 559,29 (6.710,76) euro. Blijkbaar varieert de officiële rentevoet naargelijk de looptijd van de lening. In dit geval is dit 5,25%, 5,45% respectievelijk 5,50%.
3. Bij het opmaken van een hypothekaire lening komt er een notaris kijken. Die krijgt daar ook nog enkele duizenden euro’s voor, afhankelijk van hoeveel je leent. Voor dit bedrag zou dat iets van 3.000 euro zijn, voor 200.000 euro zit je al aan 4.700 euro. Was ik maar notaris geworden!
4. Voor een enige en eigen woning krijg je – per persoon – wat geld van de belastingen terug. Dit zou – sinds dit jaar, want vroeger hing dit af van de belastingschaal waar je in zat – 45% van 2.000 (+ 700 euro de eerste 10 jaar van de looptijd van de lening) zijn. Dit komt dus neer op iets van een 1.300 euro dat je per jaar terug krijgt van de belastingen, omdat je geld geleend hebt om een woning te kopen. (Ik moet dit nog eens op een site verifiëren). 1.300 euro, voor sommigen is dat een maandloon, voor anderen twee weken werken. Voor nog anderen een week. Of nog: als je 100.000 euro geleend hebt, dan betaalt de staat jaarlijks twee van je maandelijkse aflossingen terug.

Je moet het maar weten.