“Hmm, interesting how, as a programmer, I tend to look at most aspects in life from a very logical point of view” (Obligatory xkcd reference).

By this, I mean that I often find myself thinking in terms of computer logic when I think about how things work or happen. (This sounds so much geekier than it really is. I hope.)

As I continued to philosophize on the subject, I realized that it might perhaps make interesting subject matter for some blog posts or articles.
I then wondered if a domain name like lifeasaprogrammer.com, asaprogrammer.com, likeaprogrammer.com and/or ofaprogrammer.com would still be available. (This is when I realized I really should invest in a UMPC, because now I had to get out of bed and switch on my PC to check this…)

As it turns out, these domain names were indeed still up for grabs, so I very impulsively decided to order all those domain names plus their .net equivalents… They’re dirt cheap anyway

Right now the idea is to have a blog-like site on there, where I talk about all sorts of stuff that keeps me occupied as a programmer. What I’m writing on, which technologies I’m stoked about, that sort of stuff. But obviously I’ll also want to write about other aspects of life from the programmers point of view, because that’s what the site is called.

Especially the asaprogrammer and likeaprogrammer.com domain names are pretty sweet, because I can also make sections for things like tutorials (code.likeaprogrammer.com) and virtually anything else I can think of.

I also have a passion for such things as movies and games, so if I want, I can pretty easily create reviews.ofaprogrammer.com where I would review these things. The programmer aspect of it kind of gets lost there, though.

I still have a lot of pondering and designing to do though. What section do I want there? Will I use an existing CMS like WordPress or will I roll out my own using something like Django? What will my site look like?

In the end it very well may never really kick off. It all depends on whether I feel I can come up with something that is actually going to be worth reading. Because if the site would see as many visitors as this one does, then I really don’t think I should bother

So I’ve been scheming about my upgrade plans for some time now, and today I decided to take a preliminary look at what it might cost to put my plans into fruition. I’m not entirely sure if I am going to go ahead with these upgrades; I have to take a look if there is no next generation hardware around the corner; If there is, I might actually show a bit of common sense and wait!

A few notes:

• The extra RAM would bring the total RAM to 4GB. Considering how cheap DDR2 RAM is these days, I might also get rid of my current RAM and buy 4GB of speedier memory; This mostly depends on what my motherboard will eat.
• My motherboard has surround sound audio support on board, but I’m considering the option of getting a sexy sound card. I’ve not really looked at what I’d want to buy, though.
• My XBOX 360 is broken, although I should be able to fix it. However, I always had the plan of buying a second XBOX 360, mostly because my original XBOX 360 is running hacked firmware, and I’m not going to risk going online with that one. Furthermore, my parents bought a 46″ Sony Bravia, which is Full HD, so it would be rather nice to have an XBOX with HDMI output so I can attach it to the TV.

With these notes in mind, there are some other items to shove onto the previous list.

Since the 122.20 Euro Creative SB X-FI Xtreme Gamer Fatality Professional is obviously far too cheap to be something I’d buy, I’m also listing a nice little Creative SB X-FI Elite Pro to consider as an alternative.

All in all, this is slightly more than I had originally anticipated, but it’s still well within the amount of money I expect to have earned/earn from my work placement. It’s also slightly ironic to realize that the dual core Geforce 9800 GTX actually costs a good 130 euros less than what I originally paid for my Geforce 8800 GTX! Surely that can’t be right?

Update just now found some information about the new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 which is supposedly the fastest card available at this time.
I’m assuming nVidia will have something interesting around the corner, so at any rate I’m going to wait with the upgrade until I’ve looked into that matter with greater detail.

Spencer Bear.
Click for a bigger version.

I may also have said something about setting one on fire if I did still have a teddy bear…

As you may or may not know, I’m turning 20 years old on Friday the 20th of June.
Today someone rang the doorbell, and when I opened it it turned out to be the mail man with a package.

After opening it I found the object you see to the right (unless you’re reading this on planet.tt-forums.net in which case it’s somewhere above this text; Screw you!), together with the note you see below:

The card that came with it. Nice HTML escaping!

Thank you Tenebrae for your gift! And after noticing how incredibly soft it is, I promise not to set it on fire

He is not actively telling me to, but in a horrible case of I-want-what-my-peers-have marketing, I find myself signing up to such things as LinkedIn and Twitter.

In the case of the latter service, it has so far not really proven too useful for me, because the only person I follow/following me is Sander. Who I sit next to every day. For 8 hours. And live next door to.

So if anyone is using the aforementioned services, feel free to add me as a buddy or start following me or whatever the action of subscribing to my person is called.

In other news, I STILL don’t have internet at home, even though the two weeks that would be needed to get me connected ended on Tuesday.

All of a sudden I see what Yahtzee meant with the steep learning curve. All was fine until I reached these songs after which things suddenly became impossible… Heck the game even gave me a 5G achievement for failing a certain number of times in a row

So after looking for a nice laptop to replace it with, my dad and I ordered it last Saturday and it arrived today. It’s an HP Pavilion dv9595ed (although these version numbers seem to vary in meaning per country). For info on what’s inside, check the specifications page (In Dutch, but you should be able to make sense of it anyway). You can also check out the product demo flash animation.

Apart from the 2 GHz Centrino Duo and the GeForce 8600M GS (shared memory ) I also quite like the

• Support for 802.11n, which is good because that’s what we’ve got at my home
• 320 GBs worth of hard drive space (5400 rpm)
• Integrated fingerprint reader

Yesterday I received confirmation from my school that I should be going to Finland for my work placement. Woo! There is no concrete assignment yet, but that’s being worked on. I’ll probably go to Finland somewhere around the 18th of February, for about 20 weeks. Exciting stuff!

Writing about what happens in my life is not really for me. Not necessarily because nothing ever happens, but just because I don’t really realize at the time that it makes for blogging material.
Instead, I think I’ll just blog about anything technology/computer related that I engage in, stumble upon, am excited about or feel like telling people about

While I realize that there’s bound to be a smaller audience for that than for the more generic topic that is my life, I’ve decided not to care for one very good reason:
Nobody actually reads my blog posts NOW, so I don’t have to worry about losing any readers ;). So if I’m going to write for no one but me, why not write about stuff that interests me?

Click to Enlarge

What I went with is a new mobile telephone. Not just any mobile telephone, but a 620 euro mobile telephone: An HTC TyTN II.
I read some good reviews about it so I had been wanting to buy it for some time now.

Of course, I don’t make 620 euros a month (It’s just a part-time job; I’m a full time student), but when combined with a 2-year 22,50 euros/month Vodaphone contract, together with a 9,50 euros/month Unlimited Internet BloX subscription, the phone was ‘only’ 270 euros. (Of course I’m also going to have to spend 32 euros a month for the next two years now :x)

So yeah, I’ll be enjoying my internet whilst on the road from now on, but I’ll also be enjoying the embedded GPS receiver and all the regular PDA-ness such as having a diary and being able to write e-mails.

Unfortunately I am known to be able to screw stuff up quite quickly. I bought the phone yesterday. Yesterday evening was when it went wrong: I ran the pre-installed Windows Live Messenger, and accidentally enabled the option where it syncs the phone’s contact list with the live account’s contact list.

This meant that I suddenly had all my Messenger contacts in my phone’s contact list, which was rather annoying because most of those contacts I don’t exactly call or e-mail (heck I rarely speak to most of them). So I tried disabling the option, only to find that the relevant checkbox was now grayed out (but checked). Silly as I am, I then started deleting all the useless contacts from my mobile phone’s contact list. Which of course meant that all those contacts also got deleted from my Live Messenger contacts.

This means that I now suddenly have some 60 contacts less than I used to. Luckily enough, all my old contacts are still in my ‘Allow to speak to me’ list, so I should be able to get most of them back.
Still, I wasn’t happy with Live Messenger digging itself into Windows Mobile like a friggin rootkit, so I did a hard reset and all was well.

Since my last blog entry, I’ve been to Birmingham and Oxford, I’ve done more driving of cars, I’ve had LAN parties, I’ve been having a long holiday (which is unfortunately coming to an end sometime next week) and a bunch of other things. Today my parents left for Oxford to visit my sister. This means I’ve got the house to myself, which has opened up the opportunity (although really my parents wouldn’t have been in the way if I’d done it earlier).

Earlier today I was downstairs making a sandwich when, far off in the distance, I heard the sound my mIRC plays when someone says my name. This made me realize that it’d be nice if I could be notified of highlights even when I’m downstairs. Quickly a few ideas came up such as having a device which takes my PC’s sound output, broadcasts it wireless to a receiver, which then feeds the sound into the amplifier downstairs.

I don’t actually have such a device though, so I decided to try the next best thing. I looked if there were any loopback sound drivers for Windows that would allow me to take sound output and feed it back to the PC as sound input. After a bit of googling I stumbled across Virtual Audio Cable. This tool does what I want: it creates virtual sound devices which applications can send to and receive from.

Now all I needed to do was broadcast the input over the network to the PC downstairs, which is conveniently located 1 meter from the amplifier. This was easy, all I did was install Icecast and the Winamp Oddcast plugin, told Oddcast to read from the virtual input instead of Winamp’s output, and I was done.
I got the PC downstairs to connect to the Icecast server, hooked it up to the amp using a cable I happened to have in my possession already, and then I was able to enjoy sounds (and music) from my PC upstairs, downstairs!

Unfortunately the Virtual Audio Cable software does cause for a bit of lag (about one third of a second I gather), and of course Icecast streaming means the PC downstairs buffers the sound causing considerable lag.

So although it was a nice experiment, it’s not here to stay

Tomorrow I’m moving my PC downstairs to prepare for a LAN party later this week anyway, so then I can just connect my PC to the amplifier directly.

.nl is the TLD for The Netherlands, if you didn’t know.

On another note, I know I’ve not blogged for Quite Some Time­™. I’d say “I’ll blog sometime soon”, but I’m not going to because for all I know I might be lying! I have no intention to stop blogging, but I don’t really have anything useful to say, either…