Torchlight

Welcome to Diablo 2.5! After having spent only a handful of hours with Torchlight, I can already proclaim, with a fair bit of certainty the best game of the year. It's made by many (if not all) of the same people who made Diablo 2. I have played countless hours of Diablo 2. It was my goto game for several years, before WoW took hold of me. Anyway, Torchlight is a lot like Diablo 2. So much so, in fact, that anyone who has ever played Diablo 2 might think that this is simply a sequel.

What does differ from Diablo 2, however, and what makes Torchlight a better game (so far anyway), is primarily that there seems to be a more open quest system. As some of you may recall, Diablo 2 had a fixed set of quests that you repeated in all difficulties, until you were "done". This was a fairly small set, 30 quests per difficulty in the last expansion, if memory serves, which made the Diablo 2 end-game more about loot hunting than anything else. Don't get me wrong, I liked that too, but having played a lot of WoW, I really like the almost endless supply of quests that you have. Sure, Torchlight won't be like that, most likely, with a comparatively smaller world to explore, but it does feel like they've given this particular part some though. The other very nice part is that you can have a pet companion that not only can carry things for you, it can go back to down and sell them for you! No more having to TP to town every 3 minutes because your inventory got full. You can also equip your pet (a dog or a cat) with rings, amulets and spells. It's like a better version of the hirelings that you could have in Diablo 2.

For everything else, Torchlight is exactly like Diablo 2. Similar game mechanics, similar interface, hell, even the hotkeys are mostly the same. This, of course, makes Torchlight, for someone who loved Diablo 2, a wonderful experience. If you didn't like Diablo 2, though; Torchlight is probably not for you.

So, if you were not completely against playing Diablo 2, there's a fair chance that you will love Torchlight. I know I already do. Start playing this game today! You won't regret it!

It's OK to not write unit tests

This guy is 100% correct. It's perfectly fine to not write unit tests for everything.
I don't even know what to write here. This guy is just so fucking right. Read the article, and follow some of the links. Do it! Stop being a slave to dogma!

Blast From The Past

I came across this name the other day on the internet: Keill Randor.
It rung a bell, so I started investigating. It turns out that he's a character in a book I read ages ago as a "young adult" that I loved. I no longer have the book (I wonder where all those books went), but I remember it fondly.

Since it is written for "young adults", I doubt that I would like it, should I re-read it now, but it was still quite funny to happen upon this little nugget of my past.

10/GUI

Holy shit, welcome to the future!
Click that link and spend just under 9 minutes seeing the future of human-computer interaction.
I shit you not.

Photography Is Hard!

I'm two months in to my D90 ownership, and I'm totally in love with this camera. What I'm not as excited about, however, are my pictures. I have zero creative vision. I can look at other pictures and go "ohh, that's a nice one", but there are very few of my own that elicit such praise. From me other others (in fact noone else has said that about any of my pictures, but then again only very few of them are online). I suppose I could whore around for comments and faves on flickr, but I'd rather have pictures that I'm really happy with myself, first. Then (if ever) get the recognition of others.

I think one of the reasons for my lack of creativity is this terrible city that I live in. Brussels has got to be the grayest, most boring, least interesting place on earth to live in. Shit, a hole in the ground probably has more things to look at. Don't get me wrong, I have a great life... ...I just wish I was living it elsewhere... =/

Anyway, drop by (flickr) and leave a comment, if you feel one is warranted. Or if you just want to cheer me up ;)

Obama Wins Peace Price

So, Barack Obama won the Nobel's Peace Price. What a fucking joke! I mean, he's a great man and all, and he's definitely working towards peace, but it's not like he's actually accomplished anything worthy of such an award in his one year in office.
Sure, after one term in office, maybe two. A political life's worth of fighting for peace and succeeding. Then, and only then, does it make sense to award someone the peace price. As it stands now, we don't even know if his initiatives will actually bear fruit. Hell, for all we know, he might invade Iran in the coming 6-18 months!


Clearly leaving this decision in the hands of the Norwegians was a bad idea...

Nikon Owner

I am now a Nikon owner. I have wanted an SLR for a large portion of my life. When I was young, I couldn't afford one. When I got older, I could afford one, but couldn't really justify buying one. I still can't really justify buying one, but I did it anyway, and I love my new camera! It is absolutely wonderful. I bring it everywhere with me now. Ok, maybe not to work or to the grocery store, but pretty much everywhere else. I have created a photostream on flickr, hoping to showcase some of my work, and get some feedback on the pictures I take. Why don't you head on over and take a look?


I purchased a Nikon D90 with an 18-105mm lens. I really love the ergonomics of it. I was considering the d5000 for a while, but the d90 gave me access to more things without having to go through menus, so I decided to spend the extra money. It was totally worth it!

I've been learning a lot, too. I've been all over the net, hoovering up any information I can get my dirty little hands on. In particular, there's this group on flickr called Nikon Digital Learning Center, which has been a fountain of good stuff.

Anyway, I'm very happy taking pictures, and I hope you'll be happy looking at them.

TED: Shai Agassi's bold plan for electric cars

My friend sent me this link a while back. It's a talk about electric cars and the infrastructure we need to support them. This was about 4-6 weeks ago. Being a TED talk, I was sure it would be good, but I also thought to myself "hey, I know a bit or two about electric cars. Maybe there's not a pressing need that I watch this. How much new stuff can this person possibly have.

That was a mistake. An error in judgment. I just watched it now, and I was overcome with a feeling of hope and wonder, as he laid out his plan for the electric car in the future. At the end of the talk, when the audience game him a standing ovation, I almost felt myself rise out of my chair and doing the same thing. Absolutely brilliant. Not emotionally moving, as most things that get standing ovations are (Think Christopher Reeve at the Oscar's), but just absolutely brilliant.

If you have 18 minutes (and I can't imagine anyone who doesn't), you really need to watch this. Don't postpone it like I did. It really is worth watching. Perhaps even twice.

What do you do with the pictures you take?

What do you do with the pictures you take? Say you go on vacation, or attend some event, or just take a walk somewhere and take some pictures. Provided that taking photos isn't actually what you do for a living, in which case I can fully imagine what you do with the pictures you take, what do you do with the pictures you take?
Do you view them often? Do you perform any post processing? Remove some red eyes, do some cropping, maybe enhance some of the colors? Do you keep an account on flickr or any other photo-sharing service? Picasa perhaps? Do you put your images online for the world to see, or do you keep them to yourself? Do you discard bad photographs and only keep the good, and if so, how do you determine what constitutes a "good" photograph?

I recently went on vacation to Portugal and Spain together with my girlfriend. We visited different cities, hung out on the beach, met some friends, and, of course, took some pictures. All in all we took around 450 pictures. Based on the adage that you might get one good picture per roll of 36 images (from the good old days, before the age of the digital camera), that leaves us with only a handful of "good" pictures. Should I keep only these, or transfer only these to a special album, perhaps? If I were to delete the others, I've lost any chance of ever changing my mind about a picture. If I keep them, I'm using up unnecessary space retaining things that I may never look at again. The questions about what to do with the pictures you take are, to me, endless. That's why I want to hear from you. What do you do with your pictures? Do you think that what you do, whatever it may be, justifies the resources you dedicate to taking the pictures.
In the case of carrying around a small point-and-shoot, or even taking pictures with your mobile phone, the resources spent are very small. If you carry around an SLR, potentially with multiple lenses, and do lots of post-processing, the resources spent are very large (if you can say call resources 'small' and 'large').

One of the reasons I ask is that I've always wanted an SLR. Even before the concept of digital cameras was something the common man new about, I've wanted a real camera. I've drooled over these things since my early teens, and yet I can't bring myself to buy one. Sure, they cost a bit, but that's not it. I have a hard time justifying to myself why I should own one. After all, I keep all my pictures, even the bad one, and do virtually no post processing. I look at my pictures often enough to know my collection by heart, but that's all I do. Last night, I asked myself: "what would I do with the pictures I take, if I had a great camera?". The answer was "nothing". This is the final nail in the coffin of my longing to own a real camera, I think. I could probably create a very nice looking smaller collection of "good" pictures based on the 10000 or so pictures I already have, but I don't. I don't sit down and spend the time and nurture my pictures to perfection. Probably because I know that virtually noone will ever see them. Granted, perfection is a goal in itself, but like any creator, I want an audience for the things I create. It's the same thing with software (which I'm considerably better at then photography). Without users, the light lit at the beginning of a project fades fast after the first 1.0 release. The same, I think, would happen after the "toy" period of purchasing a new camera.

Anyway, enough about my purchase anxiety. If you want to share what you do with your pictures with the rest of the world (read "my meager readership"), then please post a comment below. I would love to hear from you.

The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die

Invaders Must Die is the new album (and single) from The Prodigy. It is, in a sense (for me at least), a come back album after a fairly long period of silence and rumors of breakups and other nasty things. I recently heard this album (and I'm listening to it now), and I must say, what an album! It has all the ingredients of classic prodigy music. Much more so than the last two albums. It feels like they paid their mothers a visit and went rummaging around in whatever basements and attics there may be, digging out the instruments, synthesizers and samplers that started the whole thing so many years ago. It's like a mix between the experience and fat of the land. Old instruments, but with a new feeling. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece. Much better than their last album (Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned). Long time fans of The Prodigy will instantly feel at home in the songs. This album contains all the little quirks and twists and turns that the first two albums contained.

Upon hearing the album, I immediately went looking for concert tickets. It turns out that they played here in Belgium yesterday (fuck), and they'll be playing in Lisbon the day after I leave (double fuck). My best shot is now one of their fall gigs in Luxembourg or Holland.

If you haven't already, you need to out and get this album. It's a must have, almost regardless of who you are. It goes to 11...

Degrees

32 degrees C in my living room with the fan running and the windows open...
Gotta love weather like this =)

The Earth Is Dying, and It's Our Fault!

The fact that the situation the earth is in is grim should come as a surprise to very few readers of this blog. Most people who (I can imagine) read this are at least somewhat aware of the environment (another assumption, since pretty much only people I know read this). The problem isn't you, though, it's everybody else.
I just watched a very good video on youtube entitled "HOME". It was a video (movie really) about the sorry state our planet finds itself in. Not just global warming, but over consumption, overpopulation, deforestation and a host of other calamities that the world faces. All brought on by man, and our (some times lack of) technological advances. Did you know, for instance, that it takes 13000 liters of water to raise 1kg of beef? I didn't (ok, I did, but not until I went to an expo here in Brussels where I was told). "That's impossible", you say. "Cows don't drink that much!". This is entirely correct, they don't. What they do do, on the other hand, is eat. Lots. This water comes from the crops that are grown to feed the cows. Agriculture uses up 70% of the world's water consumption. Scary figured, but we've got to eat, right?
Back to the problem at hand; you don't need to be told that the planet is in peril, you probably already know. The people who need to be told are the people who would never go out of their way to watch a 93 minute movie about the state that the planet is in. Partially because they don't care (the bad people), and partly because the thought hadn't even crossed their mind (lost souls in a sense, people who might actually be willing to help save the planet, if they only knew it was in trouble).
I want you to show them this movie, and others like it ("An inconvenient truth" by Al Gore comes to mind). I want you to tell them that the planet is dying, and something had to be done quickly, lest we all die with it.
The mantra that you should live in the now and appreciate life is correct. It's also, at the same time, terrible advice. If you only live in the now, with no thought to past or future, your eyes only ever on the present, then you wouldn't see what is happening to the planet. You wouldn't see the progression from bad to almost infinitely worse.
People need to know that the planet is loosing resources faster than we can put them back, and people need to know that there are things they can do, small things and large things, that can help make things right again. Examples of small things are: take your power company up on that offer for green power. Sure it might be slightly more expensive (ours weren't, we saved 25% by switching) but it's good for the environment. Another thing is: leave the car at home. Especially in summer (and especially if you live in brussels! for fuck sake people, it's like a zoo here!). Take the subway or bus or even walk. It's a nice day, enjoy it while you can. Before you know it, the oxygen content in the air you breathe might be too low (ok, that probably won't happen for a long time, but it's coming).
You could also consume less. I'm not just talking about putting down the fork (I'm looking in your direction America, you fat fucks), but also just buy fewer things. If you consume less, the world has to expend less resources making the shit you purchase. If we could recycle everything with 100% efficiency, consumption wouldn't be a problem, but since we're a bit low on nano-disassemblers at the moment, you're just going to have to buy less shit. I'm sure your existing TV is good enough. You don't actually NEED to buy a brand new car. There are literally thousands of little things you can do to make your planet a better place (if you're reading this from off-world, I'm sure there are things that you can do to make whatever planet you're on a better place too). Think about how you live, and what you consume, and how much waste you produce. You might not think about it, because you don't throw it away in the garbage can, but you do produce a lot of industrial waste by the things you choose to purchase. Vote with your wallet. Buy environmentally friendly stuff, if you have the option.
I could talk forever on this subject, but in closing let me say this: you cannot pass the buck on this, and expect others to do it for you. If we don't all get together and start making the world a better place, there won't be a planet left to sustain humanity. Please think of what you're doing, and think about the planet.

Illegal Democracy

How things like this can be legal, I will never know, but I believe it is practiced everywhere.

Calling a vote for a new law when nobody is around to vote gets the law passed. This should be criminal. It is nothing short of an abuse of democracy, and the people who use it should be ashamed. Better still, they should be imprisoned.

The Credit Crisis

Interesting visual presentation of how the current credit crisis that we are in works, and what causes it.

On Passwords

I commonly think of myself as someone who has the security mindset. Someone who is aware of the security risks around him. Recently I borrowed an ADSL modem/router from work, since my provider was taking their sweet time delivering mine. I used this borrowed equipment for about a month, and then yesterday, I put my own stuff together, router, modem and wifi, and today I returned the stuff that I had borrowed from the office. As I'm handing the stuff back to my colleague, he asks me "so, did you reset your password?". My mind froze. Of course I had not reset my password, it hadn't even occurred to me to do so. Not because I had some reason to not reset my password, as I trust my co-workers, but I had just not thought about it. I realized, then, that the security mindset I operate is clearly not as tuned as it should be. Granted, I doubt anyone here would do something with my password, but that's not the problem. Just the fact that it remains on the device, should it become available to someone else, is the problem. Luckily, I'm not the only one to make such snafus, however.

As I leave, he tells me "don't worry, I'll reset it for you"...

Thought crime = hate crime?

I was reading about Bishop Richard Williamson on wikipedia as a result of reading some article where the pope had said something stupid about condoms, Africa and HIV/AIDS. Anyway, this bishop, it turns out that he denies that the holocaust ever happened. Not only does he hold that view, but he's said so in public interviews. According to his wikipedia article, holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. I found this to be incredibly strange. Why should it be illegal? Personally, I think that the holocaust happened. There is no doubt in my mind that it happened, nor that it was a terrible thing, but I don't think that it should be illegal to think that it didn't happen.

Why should it be illegal to have this belief, when it is not illegal to hold any other belief (in most civilized countries anyway)? If we take the holocaust for a provable certainty, as we should, then we can compare this disbelief to the disbelief of any other provable fact. For instance, if I held the belief that 2 + 2 actually equaled 5, should I be labeled a criminal? Clearly these two issues do not carry the same emotional charge, but they are both opinions, after all. This, I believe, falls squarely under freedom of opinion and speech. It's not illegal to be a Nazi (hold the belief that national-socialism is the way to go), to take something related, so why should it be illegal to hold this particular belief?

This isn't about this bishop. People should be allowed to think what they want without being labeled criminals. Maybe there is more to this particular illegality than what I have discovered, and if so, I would very much like it to hear your opinions about it.

Capacitor Crisis

So I recently bought a new computer. A really nice thing with an i7-920 in it, a GTX260 and an ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard. It had been working fine for about a month, without a single issue. That is, until last night. I was playing wow,just minding my own business, and at times it would shut down, just out of the blue. I didn't think more of it, so I just rebooted and continued playing. About one our later it happened again. This time I opened my case to see what the problem was, but my initial inspection revealed nothing. It wouldn't let me power back on, so I had to disconnect and reconnect the power cord, and flip the PSU switch. After this it would let me power back up, but almost as soon as it did (a couple of seconds later), I saw a blue flash of light and my computer started emitting smoke. This may sound like a bad joke, but this is actually what happened. Blue flash of light and then smoke.

Needless to say, something had just broken terribly. My initial suspicion was the PSU, which I started removing from the case. Because it was the middle of the night, however, and my girlfriend was sleeping, I didn't want to continue with the racket, so I let it rest for this this morning. When I woke up this morning, I proceeded to remove the PSU. As luck would have it, though, I can't remove the PSU without removing the motherboard, and this would prove to be serendipitous, as it turned out that it was not in fact my PSU that had broken, but rather a capacitor on my motherboard. I found scorch marks on my motherboard plate, and the burned underside of a component with some copper sticking out. This was clearly the fault, and also the flash I had seen when my case was open.

I had been lamenting the potential (if outside warranty) cost of a new PSU, but this was even worse! Anyway, I take it to the store, hoping that they'll say something like "Ohh, this is a warranty issue, we'll just take your card and give you a new one." Unfortunately, as you might have guessed already, that was not the case. It sounded more like this "Ohh, I don't think this is a warranty issue. I'll have to check with ASUS, in any case it'll take at least 3 weeks". How this can now be a warranty issue is beyond me, but warranty or not, the "at least 3 weeks" easily turns in to "more like 2 months, if you're lucky", I know from previous warranty issues. The concept of being without a working computer for that long was not something I liked, so in the end I bought a brand new motherboard. In my best case scenario I get a new motherboard from asus which I can resell for some money. In the worst case I'd have to buy another one anyway, in which case I'd be out of the money anyway, AND have had to wait several weeks. Hopefully I'll get a new one form them, but you never know. I'd like to think that burning capacitors might be covered by warranty, but you never know.

There's no snazzy end to this. I realize, as I'm writing, that there's no way to sow this bag up neatly, so I'll just leave you with this: fuck...

Othello

We went to the theater tonight to see some Shakespeare. Othello to be precise. It was performed by the BSS, or Brussels Shakespeare Society. It was here in Brussels, and it was in English. The whole thing took just over 3 hours, I think, and the performances by the lead roles were absolutely amazing. I don't remember the names of the actors, but the two leads, Othello and Iago, were great. The supporting cast, however, I'm sad to say, were very bad. There were some acceptable performances, but I don't know their characters' names'. The biggest problem, I think, was the fact that most of the supporting cast did not have English as their first language, or even their second. Their delivery was also very bad. Othello however, and Iago, and to some extent Iago's wife, who only really got to speak properly in the second half, were very good. Excellent delivery, lots of passion, and inlevelse, to use a Swedish word. It was all very dramatic and extravagant, but then again it's Shakespeare, so it is supposed to be. Unfortunately I'm quite tired, otherwise I would ave written a proper review, but I'm sure you can wikipedia the play to see what it was about. It's also too bad that I don't know the names of the actors. I doubt that my site ranks highly in theater circuits, but they'd at least get one more hit on google...

Crazy Awesome

Factories are cool

http://www.bouncingredball.com/2009/02/10/12-fantastic-photos-of-factories-in-japan/

Dirt-cheap web browser tablet

This is cool stuff: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/19/techcrunch-tablet-update-prototype-b/

The idea is to get a new type of device into people’s hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf. It plays Flash video flawlessly so you can watch movies and TV shows on Hulu or Joost or wherever. Or listen to music on MySpace Music. Or use TokBox to have a video chat with your parents. Then check email and call it a day. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, Wikipedia, Google Docs and Gmail are the killer apps for this device.

I want one. I want one of these much more than I want a netbook. Battery life remains to be seen, but on the whole I like it. I would like to see them hit the $200-250 mark. Any higher than that and people just won't buy it.

Published author

There we go, my very own ACM citation. I am now a published author. My thesis work resulted in a paper called Dynamic optimization of Bluetooth networks for indoor localization, which was submitted to and accepted for the AASN'08 Conference in Paris earlier this year. Googling for "markus jevring bluetooth" shows not just this paper but also my thesis, which is available through my university.

From all this, I'm sure you can gather that I have finally completed this stage of my studies. I am now a Master of Science in Computer Science, for whatever it is worth. I'm currently not looking for research positions, as I thought I would be, but that may change in the future.

I know I haven't posted in a (criminally long) time, but hopefully with this "catch up" post, I'll be able to start posting more often. I'll be able to get back to the mindless rants you come here for soon. I just felt that I couldn't do one before detailing the next big step in my life (that sounded less corny in my head, just now). Anyway, I now live in Brussels and I write software for a stock broker called Petercam. I really like the work, and I get to do cool stuff almost on a daily basis, so I'm happy. Our apartment is far from wonderful, but we are currently looking at alternatives, and we estimate that we'll be in a new, more acceptable, one my mid-February.
Being in Brussels, of course, means that I've left the Netherlands behind me. Two years in Enschede was quite enough. Anyway, time to get back to work. I'm almost alone in my section here today, as most people are on holiday. It's quite pleasant to have a somewhat calmer environment. Now if I could also get a properly sized monitor, everything would be just peachy...

On Academics

As in people in academia:

Most academics, however, are only academics. In the course of their careers, they have been paid a salary only by a university; they are one-dimensional people. They therefore have not had the breadth of experience to give them a sense of the reality of international relations; nor have they had the depth of experience to give them a sense of its tragedy. These are the hollow men, and the shallow men, too. For such people, there are only a few kinds of achievements possible in regard to international relations. One of them is to sit down and spin out theories that fellow academics will praise as being rigorous and original. (Merely being realistic and responsible, in contrast, will not evoke their praise.) In truth, most academics are only concerned about the good opinion of about a dozen other academic specialists in their particular sub-sub-field

Kurth, James. “Inside the Cave: The Banality of I.R. Studies"

The man speaks the truth, bitches!...