Willy Dobbe - sound

Has been...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:21:55 +0200

You know you are a has been if you launch a new site using a kick ass CMS and the projectlead of the CMS is not even blogging it.

Sleep tight Metallica.

DrupalSong, call for video with your kids

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:13:07 +0200

The infamous Drupalsong; good, bad and young. And the young people seem to like it a lot better then some of the parents; it attracts children like a magnet and they can hear it a 100 times it seems. My kids sing it along and like it a lot.

Based upon a discussion on elvisblogs I thought about making a remix of all the young Drupalaars singing, spinning and dancing along the Drupalsong.

So if you have a camera and a Drupalsong crazy kid and are willing to release the video under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license, dump it on your (video)site and I';; grab a copy and remix all the Drupal Kids in to one happy family. Be sure to do a "for:bertboerland" on delicious so I can pick it up and or tag it DrupalSongByKids on Youtube.

(Technically the CC license and the GPL song are incompatible, bit I'll try to sort this out with Lullabot))

ID&T zijn sukkels (trademarks, logo's and everything)

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:55:20 +0200

Lezers van mac-zone weten het wellicht al; ID&T (een herrie club voor geestelijk minder bedeelden die niet kunnen dansen en geen gehoor meer hebben) durft
een dreigbrief te schrijven naar mac-zone. Omdat het logo van mac-zone erg zou lijken op het logo van ID&T. Lees de details op de maczone site.

Het logo dat u gebruikt komt qua vorm en kleurstelling sterk overeen met het logo van Q-dance, hetgeen als beeld- en/of woordmerk door ID&T is geregistreerd. Dit houdt in dat ID&T exclusief gerechtigd is gebruik te maken van het logo en zich mag verzetten tegen het gebruik van eenzelfde of sterk daarop gelijkend logo. Met gebruik van het logo kunt u immers bij het publiek de indruk wekken dat uw bedrijf en de door uw gepubliceerde website in verband staan met ID&T. Hiermee trekt u ongerechtvaardigd voordeel van en doet u afbreuk aan de reputatie van ID&T.

Proest zegt u? Dubbel proest!

Gelukkig zitten er wat jongens (m/v) bij mac-zone die wel iets begrijpen over hoe kansloos, zinloos en dom deze aktie van een overgeiligere "ik moet mijn target halen" meester-in-de-rechten-twatje is. Die wijken dus niet, weten dat het "power button" logo een defacto standaard is geworden voor het aan of uit zetten van een elektronisch device en ook dus op alle Mac's aanwezig.

Dat ID&T's marketing afdeling zo lui was om niet een onderscheidend logo te maken, maar een rip of te selecteren van een bestaand logo, dat kan men achteraf niet aan mac-zone verwijten.

ID&T geeft hiermee niet alleen weer geen verstand te hebben van beeldrecht, copyright en aanverwante intellectueel eigendomsrecht, maar vergist zich ook behoorlijk in hoe zoiets "viral" tegen je kan keren online! De tijden dat de platenboer de baas was zijn voorbij stampgasten, dreidbrieven sturen heeft alleen zin als je ze gaat waar maken en alleen als je gelijk hebt. Doen alsof je mikt op de knie-en met een waterpistooltje en de trekker niet overhaalt terwijl je ook nog eens de bad guy bent, wreekt zich tegen je. Ennu, ik heb nog wat kandidaten voor je!

update: ID&T ziet in dat ze zich vergist hebben; "shit zeg, nooit een website aanvallen, die gasten hebben bezoek! Waarom heeft onze site dat niet?"/. Wel jammer, de disclaimer op de mac-zon site meldt nu dat ze niet gelieerd zijn aan de stampgasten, ik denk eerder dat ID&T had moeten zeggen dat ze geen creatieve designert hadden en dus maar het aan/uit knopje gekanteld hadden. Ik zou ook helemaal niet met die stampgasten gelieerd willen zijn.

ID&T, power off...

Drupal as a Home Service Bus (beyond Home Automation)

Fri, 30 May 2008 13:57:14 +0200

If... If I would start my own company... But I won't. I do not have the skills, money, balls and most of all, I am rather happy with my current employer Dutch Open Projects. But if I would start my own company, the services would not be based upon Location Based Services, a carbon copy of free available software or "Social Networking two dot ooo". It would be based upon my hobby in combination with my "vision"

Part of my (IT) related hobby's include Drupal (the best Content Management System), MythTv (the best way to watch less junk TV) and everything Mac related (the best way to communicate with a CPU).

Combining these elements will give you nice opportunities. For example your iPhone could be your remote control for your telly:

(Youtube)

But you could also use your iPhone as a device to watch television on; recorded streaming television based upon your preferences towards your telehone!

(Youtube)

And these are just two simple examples; it could be expanded to controlling and integrating the Squeezebox (cheesy: WiFi to your HiFi) I own and towards all the other electric equipment in my house with X.10 (cheesy: control your house from your mouse) like Mr House does. But you will directly see two problems; all these devices and software packages act like they are the master:

they do not talk to each other
they do not provide a nice consistent user interface

In fact, most of the user interfaces these devices provide are really really bad, if you think Drupal pre4 sucked usability wise, try a MythTV distro from one year a go or even the current version of MrHouse! Now the time might not be right for my "business plan". I know that in the USA the concept of Tivo is rather normal for early adapters but here in the EU harddisk based PVR's are just catching on. It will take some time before the public sees and needs that these devices should be integrated .And by that time I am sure that our friends from RedMond have a very nice "solution" for you; "Vista Home Automation # 1984".

By not combining, not integrating, they do not give the user the option to co-related information about their house. For example, if my central system that my family would not be in the house since there are no blue-tooth telephones detected at 2:00h in the morning while the camera sensors motion, I would like to be paged, see the camera images from my iPhone and when I will not react within a certain amount of time, the system should dial out to the police. Okay, bad example, I do not want that since most likely I forgot my phone or the battery is dead and I am in the kitchen to make some milk for my son to get him to sleep. But you get the idea; a centralised place where information is gathered from multiple sources, co-related and with work-flow, action upon this information.

And by not combining, not integrating, they do not provide the user with a good user interface that is consistent and adapts (context aware) towards the client (text messaging, instant messaging, telephone, full browser etc). A key factor forsuccess beyond the usual geeks.

I would like to be able to solve these two problems, make a central place that talks to all devices and can be "smart" and provide the user with the best UI (s)he can get. Now before you state that there is such a product, I am aware of pluto. Pluto combines music (squeezeboxes), television (MythTV), voice (asterisk) and much more into a central box. See for more information their (nasal!) presentation. But they do not combine it in what I would call a "central smart box". That and the fact that they can use some competition :-)

A central smart box would be able to adapt fast, if there would be an API for a grocery shop, it will be in the software in the box within days, weeks. It would know my spending habits and my income and would swap money to places where it would get the most interest, it would read my RSS feeds and based upon time and location "read" them to me, it would know my agenda and the availability of my friends and it would do so much more that I can think of right now.

And by now, you should see why I would like to add my other hobby; Drupal. I think that a central system that acts upon actions and can do more then that could be a Content management Framework like Drupal. I know that PHP by nature would not be very good for acting as a real time broker between information, but I still would go for a Drupal solution instead of J2EE. Drupal is easier, it adapts way faster, can integrate, has a geeky loving community that probably has some of the devices I mentioned, can look beautiful, has a very small footprint and can be context aware.

I would like coin the phrase Home Service Bus, after the Enterprise Service Bus. More the Home Automation that enables a user to control electronic elements, it would be able to make decisions on its own, based upon input from my actions and the status of electronics devices. It would be a broker of information; it would be a Home Service Bus! Now let's just wait until the Gartner People catch up on this phrase in half a decade :-)

So, if I would start my own company it would be based on building this. But since I will not, you a free to make it. And -lazy as I am- I will buy it from you!

MooCowMusic Band, a VERY cool iPhone App!

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:56:21 +0200

I have been using the products of MooCoWMusic for some time on my iPhone. Ar to be more exact, Brecht loves them. Small monolithic programs where you play one instrument.

Now however they changed this. In a big way, see the Band program from MooCowMusic. You can use multiple instruments, samples, layouts and record all instruments on different tracks. You can not save or load your work yet, but once that has been added a true community with artists will surely arise around this program.

There are already a lot of instruments that you can add via a repo on installer ut you can also d/l some instruments via the forum.

See a demo video for yourself, cool oder?

iPhone Tip: increase the volume of calls via the headset

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:21:58 +0100

On my jailbroken 1.1.3 iPhone the soundlevel for podcasts / music is fine via the speaker and via the headset and the volume of the Youtube videos (great interface!) is good as well. And both can be adjusted on the fly. But the soundlevel of a voicecall via the headset is useless; you can not hear a single word! And worth of all; there is no interface for adjusting the volume, a real big booboo for Apple IMHO.

Luckely there is an application called "Volume Booster 1.1.3" and that solved my problems. I can now use my iPhone with the headset, still stupid of Apple not to make this adjustable via a GUI.

Downloadgeneratie

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:29:46 +0100

Op NRC een stuk over de "downloadgeneratie".

Twintig jaar na zijn commerciële doorbraak is de disc namelijk geen serieuze muziekdrager meer

Een goed geschreven stuk, immers: de LP is dood, de casette is dood, de CD is dood en de DVD is niet het meest geschikte medium voor muziek en ook al ziek. Dus de fysieke dragers voor muziek zijn wel redelijk weg. En nu DRM door de meeste platenbazen intussen ook dood is verklaard, is het benoemen van de huidige generatie als "downloadgeneratie" een logisch gevolg. Dit betekent niet dat dit om niets ("gratis" )hoeft te zijn of illegaal, er is veel muziek legaal via CC licenties downloadbaar van het internet en er zijn ook genoeg internet zaken als iTunes van Apple of de MP3 dienst van Amazon waar je legaal muziek kunt kopen.

Wat ik wel kenmerkend vindt, de eigenschap van "de vorige generatie" om "de hudige generatie" van een naam te voorzien, meestal een niet al te gunstige naam. Zo had je de babyboomers, de juppen, de nix generatie, generatie X, babyboomers, achterbankgeneratie, patatgeneratie, nintendogeneratie en tal van andere namen worden verzonnen door de "vorige" generatie om het verschil duidelijk te maken met de "nieuwe" generatie.

Nu dus de download generatie. Het voelt alsof ik dat mijn hele leven al deel van uit maak. En dat is voor een groot deel waar, sinds 1989.

Rudeboy doet sesamstraat ("ik ben mijn lieve hondje kwijt!")

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 23:07:53 +0100

Fan? I'm no fanboy. Maar als ik iets moet kanen dan maar de Urban Dance Squad met frontrunner Rudeboy. Of toch misschien Bert en Ernie ("Het klinkt misschien een beetje mal, maar ik ben een kerstbal"). Met Wim T Schippers heeft Nederland zeker de beste Bert en Ernie ter wereld.

En wat krijg je als je deze twee combineert? Inderdaad! Rudeboy zingt een favouriet nummer van Brecht en mij, "Ik ben mijn lieve hondje kwijt" van een CD die wij hebben. Luister ook eens naar het orgineel. Leve youtube, 5 pagina's UDS!.

Check uit Happy Go Fucked Up (video versie is iets anders dan plaat, ik kende video overigens niet), '90 pinkpop, een klasieker, say a little prayer for my demo, in '94 was rudeboy al behoorlijk breder (some chitchat live) en meer candy!

Drupal Sucks... (or in Soviet Russia Content Manages You)

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:23:58 +0200

I like TWIT and follow lots of their podcasts. Amongst others, I follow MacBreakWeakly. They are known to start making ratholes. In their latest podcats 55, they end up on a debate about if Open Source projects are innovative. It is an old discussion and both side (yes, no) have their points. If you look at it from the lower OSI levels and the commodity stuff, they might be right in a way. Linux for example is invisible for users, GNU/Linux might be visible for sysadmins and KDE for users. But Linux is invisible. Innovations in the kernel are regarded by most people as efficiency, not as innovation. A new cool filesystem? Means nothing for the average user. Faster? Smaller? Cleaner? Efficiency, not innovation…

And if you look at OpenOffice.org –no matter how great the product is- it is lagging behind their mean competitor; the Microsoft Office suite. Sure, it is better at I18N and obtaining standards and good enough for most people. But it isn’t regarded as innovative by most people. So there is a case for people saying that Open Source software is not innovative. Note, these people are not debating that open source licenses are innovative, or that the open source way of running projects are innovative. "Just" that the software –the product- is not innovative.

On the other end of the spectrum are people saying that true innovation can only be reached by openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally; Wikinomics or the “open source way” of project management. These people look at Mozilla (Firefox) and how Microsoft is struggling to follow up and is playing that game rather bad. Or they look at KDE and Gnome that are way better UI’s then Vista and for sure then XP.

My stand? Open Source Software is software. Some software is highly visible – a browser, a GUI- some software is only enabling other software, a kernel, memory allocation or a filesystem. Innovations are everywhere; some are visible for the enduser, some for the programmer, some not at all. If you only label “innovation” that what you can see, then you innovation is as big as you … well have vision. And most people have a very limited sight; they might look at the eycandy stuff (yes, that would include me) or at the API’s but seldom see the complete 360.

Now how is this relevant to Drupal? Well, Drupal is both a Content management System that users can work with and it highly visible for them as it is a Content Management “Framework”, only visible for programmers. So innovation that we – the Drupal Community- make will be regarded by some as visible and by some as invisible. Views for examples is way ahead of its time, SQL statements via an easy GUI. If you are a programmer of a website builder, you will love this kind of innovation. Now if you are a webmaster or use rof that same site, you will not see this and hence not label it as innovation. Point is: Drupal is for the user and for the programmer. Innovations in Drupal are for everybody, it is just that not that many people will see it and hence label it as innovation

No back to Mac Break Weakly. In the podcast 55 around 30 minutes after the start, Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne, and Andy Ihnatko start a rant about innovation and Open Source. For Apple lovers a normal discussion. Mac OSX is based upon a BSD kernel ("not innovative") and has a proprietary good GUI. The basics is on Open Sourced, the value is brought by proprietary software. Or so the arguments starts.

Then the move to Drupal. Here is a transcript of the rant (snipped some stuff):

Andy: ”The last thing I want is that any software or technology is under control of the Open Source Software community…
Leo: ”What?!”
Andy: ..”because they are really really bad creating end user applications.
Merlin: … that was a lot more true 5 years ago. Are you actually using recently stuff? Cause lots of stuff has come a really long way.
Andy: I got the latest Ubuntu… I got the latest Open Office. And I still don’t have a working Wifi on that notebook. And I still think Open Office is where Mickrosoft Office was 4 years ago. All the really cool stuff. All the really innovative stuff, is created by companies like Apple. Open Source is great at standard building and it is great for creating alternatives for people. [...OpenMoko vs iPhone rant…] I don’t think that Open Source developers understand the need of end users who just want a solution.
Merlin: … that can be very true. It can be hard to use. And right now, I am doing a lot of work with Drupal… this is an Open Source application
Andy: Don’t talk about Drupal, IT SUCKS!
Leo: Laughs very loud.

Then it goes on and one. Now before you bash Andy, listen to him and think about his points from his point of view. I think Drupal –the community, the project and the product- is one of the most innovative software projects. But a user is always right. Always. And if a potential user thinks the product sucks, we need to make it better. Not change his mind, change the product and let him change his mind.

Twit.tv by the itself is a Drupal site build by our friends over at lullabot.

Urban Dance Squad op Wikipedia

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 08:57:55 +0200

Als student was ik behoorlijk in de ban van de geweldige muziek van de Urban Dance Squad. En nog steeds luister ik hun oude albums regelmatig af (iemand nog wat bootlegged materiaal?)

Jammer om te zien dat de Nederlandse wikipedia entry behoorlijk summier is. Terwijl de Engelstalige versie van de UDS zeer compleet is. Wie vult aan?

New stereo set at home... pump tha speakers.

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 08:41:55 +0200

A couple of weeks ago we ordered a new HiFi system. And unlike anything I have ever done before, I (well, we) bought a very good set. I was known to always have a repo cheapo my-first-sony HiFi set but now thinks have changed.

We bought a tuner receiver from Onkyo, the TX-8222 (rear pic, front pic). It is a very good system, basic but from a good brand. No SP/DIF an no 5.1/7.1 output but just a very good amplifier!

But the best thing, we bought some of the best speakers you can find for under 500 euro per piece. Indeed not cheap, but really a very good sound! We bough the Dutch Hepta speakers, the spring excellence to be exact. And as said, very good quality. Read some of the raging reviews in Dutch (1, 2, 3). In Heemstede there is good shop, Van Amerongen who gave good advice brought and even installed all the equipment in our home.

Yes! I can use my squeezebox again and browse through my Gigs of music collection again. Right now I am listening to Lou Reed. It sure has been a long time I have listened to him and I can't remember it ever sounded this good. "Faces and Names, I wish the would be the same"

Tom Waits

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:23:07 +0100

Tommie rules

iPod Nano

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:02:24 +0100

It's official, I'm going to become an I Sheep now! The other day I bought an iPod Nano at
kruitvat. It is an old model since the black nano's only come in 8GB and it isnt realy really cheap. But still, I wanted Francis to give something and if she doesnt like it or use it, I'll become a sheep myself

Even the USB poweradapters for iPods are outselling the bloody MSFT "ipod killer" (yek) Zune over at amazon, eat that Bill! So it doesnt suck that much IMHO: "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners."

If you happen to run into / call Francis, dont tell her yet, the nano is due in 2 days or so. And, having an iPod is the best way to get a Powerbook

Urban Dance Squad schopt Aars!

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 02:47:52 +0100

Yessur! The best live Dutch band, better then all those other fusion bands. Live in Belgium last summer. I think the first one / two numbers suck, but after that the SQUAD is back like it was never gone.

You are famous when you are dead!

Logitech buys Slimdevices

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 10:44:17 +0200

Logitech to acquire Slim Devices!, as an owner of a squeezebox I can say that this is a smart move of Logitech. It is a very good product and cool company. If you dont own a squeezebox but do have a larger collection of MP3's, even then look at this product. Because all their software is OpenSource, you can download the server and the client. Doenst come with the cool device but still.

Lets hope that Logitech will continue to follow the business model of Slimdevices, give a away the recipe and open a restaurant.