Tom van der Woerdt-blog

De open dag van mijn school. Tja, da’s één keer per jaar, vier sessies verspreid over twee dagen. In de brugklas heb ik meegeholpen voor techniek, in de tweede klas heb ik meneer Luten geholpen met de voorbereidingen, in de derde, vierde en vierde heb ik niks gedaan, en ik heb deze keer op de open dag zelf meegeholpen met het rondleiden van mensen.

Waarom?
Net zoals vorig jaar zat ik te twijfelen of ik mee zou doen of niet. Het was erg gezellig, maar toch ook wel “saai”. Op de laatste schooldag voor de vakantie kreeg ik echter een tweede reden om mee te doen (weten dat veel vrienden ook mee gaan doen helpt!) en heb ik mij ingeschreven.

Wat vond ik er van?
In 1 woord: helemaal geweldig. Ik ben zo’n regel-persoon, zo’n persoon die van de ene plek naar de andere schiet om alles te regelen en toch een overzicht te houden. Natuurlijk is dat vrij lastig met 1300 man die verspreid over 4 sessies langs komen, en andere mensen die ook hun best doen alles te regelen niet voor de voeten lopen is ook niet makkelijk, maar juist dat maakt het leuk: de complexiteit en tegelijkertijd de simpelheid. Ik vind het overigens ook heerlijk om gewoon lekker door de school (en bijgebouwen) te rennen om snel eventjes iets te regelen. HEERLIJK gewoon.

Conclusie
Ik vond deze dagen gewoon zo heerlijk, dat zelfs als het 10 euro zou kosten om mee te doen, ik het betaald zou hebben. Volgend jaar sowieso weer. =) Al zou ik het wel fijn vinden als ik een iets meer organisatorische rol krijg, want het grootste deel van de tijd moest ik gewoon achter een leraar aan lopen, en that’s it. Ook wil ik volgend jaar niet voor een vak (informatica ofzo) staan, want dan regel ik al helemaal niks meer. Volgend jaar dus sowieso weer!

Tom

Foto’s zijn klein gehouden om privacyredenen.

Voor iemand die 2009 een kutjaar vond is het maken van goede voornemens toch echt wel makkelijk.

• Minder computeren. Wakoopa.com/tvdw zegt op het moment dat ik sinds 22 maart 2009 (omgerekend) 2505 uur heb gecomputerd. Dat zou betekenen dat ik sinds 1 januari 2009 (ongeveer) 3615 uur heb gecomputerd. Ik schrik daar van, maar ik reken eventjes verder. 3615 uur over 52 weken is zo’n 70 uur per week, 10 uur per dag. Totaal zitten er in een jaar 8760 uren. Het lijkt me toch dat ik mijn computer-tijd wel kan verminderen met tenminste 25%?
• Hobby’s. Ik ben, zoals hierboven genoemd, bijna een dubbele werkweek bezig met computers, en dat is toch wel veel te veel. Als ik minder wil gaan computeren moet ik dat opvullen met iets anders. Zo zou ik erg graag gitaar leren spelen (en nu echt ^^) en ook wil ik een oude hobby, boeken lezen, weer oppakken. Dit heb ik eigenlijk al anderhalf jaar niet meer gedaan: sinds ik mijn mooie laptop heb. Ik was tevens van plan binnenkort een nieuwe computer te kopen, doe ik bij nader inzien toch maar eventjes niet.
• Gedrag: In 2009 heb ik altijd nee gezegd tegen elk glas alcohol dat mij aangeboden werd. Best dom, eigenlijk. Ik weet van mijzelf dat ik mijzelf kan beheersen als het gaat om het consumeren van schadelijke stoffen (chips enzo ^^) dus een klein beetje alcohol kan geen kwaad. Ik ga het jaar in met 3 glazen champagne, niet meer en niet minder.
• Sociaal: Ik kan zeker een paar echt goede vrienden gebruiken. Meer socializen met anderen dus.
• Werk: Ik neem een baan. Niet voor het geld, maar voor het ontwikkelen van vriendschappen etc.
• School: Ik kan zeker beter mijn best doen, en ik weet dat het zal moeten, zelfs al vind ik het nutteloos.
• Games: Ik game te veel, ik ga minder gamen. Ik kijk hierbij naar een goede vriend: Bob Droog.

Dat is ‘t wel zo’n beetje. Ik weet nu al dat de meeste van bovenstaande dingen niet gaan lukken, maar ik ga het proberen!

Tom

Funny. I just realized, after finishing the latest Call of Duty Singleplayer, that I already blogged about this before. Just not so specific. No, this isn’t going to be another review about Modern Warfare 2, because there are plenty of those. No, this one will be a lot more specific: the idea behind the story (or at least, the thing I think to be the idea behind it. After all, I got the game yesterday!).

Basically, you are a part of the US Army and fight a battle against the Russians. Not just the Russians but the Russian Terrorists. In the second (or was it third?) part of the game, you go deeply undercover (in a very cruel scene) and infiltrate the terrorists. You kill dozens of civilians and it’s really unethical. In the end you get killed by one of the terrorists, and they get away.

It’s very clear that the most important quote in the game is “History is written by the victors”. This is said on the intro, and the developers even dedicated a complete mission to it, where you have to kill the person telling lies about what happened and get it all right. After all, when you kill that person, you are the victor, and then you are the one writing history, right?

What makes it even more clear that that the most important thing is, is the fact that, in the credits, you are in a museum. You go through all places you have been through. At first you wouldn’t notice, but slowly you will notice that things look better than they were. For example, there’s a part of the museum dedicated to the scene where you were trapped in a chamber that would explode in 10 seconds. This part is true. However, the museum displays it as 2 persons being constrained with ropes on chairs, with a 10 second timer behind them. In the real (it’s just a game, I know) version, they weren’t constricted to chairs and they got out very easily.

Another example is the terrorist scene I mentioned a bit above. Basically the most failing mission in the game (you failed because you got killed, it’s not about the quality of the game here!) was pictured as a great victory, and all the civilians that were killed there was unavoidable.

It was just a game, I know. But don’t forget that games can get really close to reality, not only by graphics. I’m no expert, but I think that a part of this game is targeted at getting people to realize that what is published, is not always true. And, to be honest, I think they are right. History is written by the victor.

It’s Monday morning, 12:10 AM. I woke up at 1 PM. I should be sleeping, but because I’m awake for only 11 hours, I can’t. Monday morning is usually the time I think about things.

Tonight as well. My last tweet was about me needing a Bashir-62. It’s a Star Trek “holo-program”. Then I realized I needed some time away from my life. I ended the tweet with #FML (Fuck My Life).

But the thinking had only just started. I have a German test tomorrow and haven’t found the motivation to learn for it, so I will fail the test. I must admit that it’s pretty much the same with my math test tomorrow, but I’m rather good at math so it shouldn’t really be that much of a problem.

I ended up thinking about why I have motivational problems. Why do I go to school? It’s the law. Why are the only other people at school who have motivational problems, your friends? Now that’s a good question. Most of them are computer-geeks. How did they end up as computer geeks? I guess they didn’t have anything better to do.

And the answer to that question made me realize a possible cause of my motivational problems. All my days are the same. I go to school, then stare at a screen for a few hours, sleep. Next day, the same. And the next day, the same again. In the weekends, it’s the same, except for the school part. It’s always the same.

Isn’t it obvious what the problem is? I clearly don’t have something to look forward to. A school vacation perhaps, but that’s just staring at my screen for 16 hours a day and that gets boring very quickly. No, I need something special.

You could ask me: What do you want? Well, I don’t know. A vacation to a far country? Not alone, and not with my parents either. I kept asking myself that question for over 15 minutes, and I think I know the answer: I am lonely.

Every now and then, I download some songs from the internet. I respect the authors of these songs, so I usually buy them from iTunes. But I also have the good habit of cleaning my computer every 2 to 3 months (windows re-install) so I did that a few days ago.

Basically, what you expect from a web-store like the iTunes store, is that it will automatically re-download the songs you had before you cleaned your PC. I mean, if Steam can do this with games of 5 GB, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for Apple with songs of about 3 MB-. Sure, we are talking about a lot more songs than games, but I don’t think many people buy 5 GB off the iTunes store.

So, I logged into my iTunes this afternoon, after installing iTunes again, and I clicked “Check for available downloads”. It told me I already had all songs! Well, in my Purchased tab, I only saw one song, and that was a free song I downloaded from the iTunes Store because I wanted to test something. So, I checked the iTunes FAQ and it told me I would have to backup all my songs!!

Isn’t it ridiculous that I have to re-buy all my songs again? Is it really too much that I expect the iTunes Store to re-download my purchases after I re-install my computer? Steam does it. The EA download manager does it. Battle.net does it. And a way bigger company called Apple can’t do something as simple as this?

They force us to have DRM on the songs we purchase. They force us to backup everything we buy, but we can’t burn them on CDs if we want to listen to them. They can only be on five computers at the same time, and if you accidentally forget to deauthorize your computer before re-installing your PC, you can only have four computers at the same time. The iTunes Store really limits what you can do with the music.

I don’t think I’ll ever buy off the iTunes Store again. I will resume my old habits of downloading them from Usenet and Torrents, and if I respect the author well enough, I will make a donation to them. Sorry Apple folks, but it’s 2009 and this kind of trickery isn’t wise.

This blog post was written for Blog Action Day, http://www.blogactionday.org/

Our climate is changing. Probably even more than we know. Many of us know we have to do something about it. The country I live in, The Netherlands, is already making some laws to “help” us, by, for example, prohibiting sale of the old-style light bulbs, in favor of LED lights. Which is good.

But it is not our lights that use a lot of energy. It’s the big companies, who use most of it. And, with computers usually generating the worst energy consumption, it is the IT sector which should change.

Computers in homes and companies: People have them active even when they don’t need them. Each morning they get turned on to check the e-mails, to be turned off when people go to bed. And with a total of about 1.6 billion internet users (source), this uses a lot more than is necessary.

In data-centers, the same happens. Servers are active all the time. However, that is the idea of a server, so it is acceptable. The energy consumption of these may be reduced, but that is not the main issue. The temperature of the average data-center is kept at about 20 degrees Celsius. This is not needed: Servers will perform just as well if they raise this temperature to 30 degrees Celsius. System admins will not like that, which is why it is currently 20 degrees Celsius. But wouldn’t 25 degrees be a better option? It could save lots of energy, because data-centers would have to be cooled less.

Also an option, which I decided to do, is put the servers in “green” data-centers. While everyone knows this doesn’t mean the data-centers are green-c0lored, and it doesn’t mean that it’s 100% climate-neutral, it’s better than the average data-center. The data-center the server of this blog is in, for example, cools the data-center from air from the outside. Since it is a Dutch data-center, it means that the air compressor can be turned off 40% of the time. Also, the power to the data-center is “green”: Produced only with sustainable energy such as wind, sun and biomass.

There are still a lot of things that need to be changed. Now would be a good time.

It can happen to everyone. You have a problem with Skype.

So, what you do: you go to www.skype.com and try finding a solution. Too bad, you are the first one. So, you open a support ticket.

A few days later, you get a reply from them. Basically, there’s an Indian guy trying to answer your questions by clicking a pre-defined answer.

Our conversation, attached below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking at the media of the past weeks/years, I’ve noticed these things:

• Local problems are WAY more important than remote problems. The 5 (or more?) kills (because of terrorism) a day in Afghanistan aren’t important to the media. One kill during a dance festival, however, is horrible, and requires all the attention of the public. And I didn’t even count for all the other deaths in the world.
• The media never cares about the indirect and a bit more complex news. For example, where the 9/11 (World Trade Center) killed “only” 3.017 people, 229.866 people were killed by the Indian Earthquake in 2004 which caused a tsunami. I cannot deny that 3.017 is a lot, but the media was way more interested in the terrorist attack of 9/11. Why? My guess is that it was because either people think it’s too far away (after all, India isn’t exactly a part of the Occident world), but it could also be because a terrorist attack is more spectacular and the media would receive more views.
• Saying anything about this is “not done”. For example, a Brazilian advertising company published a non-official WWF poster a few days ago. Sure, the WWF denied it was in any way related to them but if you ask me I’d say they are damn right. If we can’t talk about the kills made by terrorists, and people don’t care about the kills made by nature, how are we ever going to return nature to the state it once had? Or should we just destroy it and let our sons and daughters fix the problems we created?

In other words: Our media is too much focused on entertaining the public, instead of bringing true facts.

Tom