Weblogs looking like spam websites

Sometimes there's a website that you visit which has the same properties as a spam weblog. The website just looks like a spam weblog. Most of these websites are based on free templates or free weblog services. I'm talking about weblogs of Blogger with the standard templates, but any service and template will do. This is the one I used.

The spam is a problem on its own, but I have another problem with it. Sometimes real websites look like spam weblogs. I had two weblogs on which I wrote, but after some time I couldn't anymore. Just because it felt wrong. I moved all my weblog writing efforts to this website and I created my own design.

I think it's a good idea for everybody with a website or weblog to create an unique design, so it will stand out and create its own personality.

Faster ADSL by changing the cable

At the end of this year the download speed of our ADSL subscription is increased to 6 MBit/s. The problem was that somehow we did get less than 1 MBit/s. This problem was fixed by making a new cable to the ADSL router/modem. The new problem now is that I don't have a clue about why this cable is better than the previous one.

Interesting upcoming concerts

As always while adding concerts to my concert website, I saw a nice concert. This time it's a concert of The Slackers. Another one is the Paaspop Festival. I'm not sure if I will be going to one of these, but it's very tempting.

Perl Testing Book Received

Yesterday I received the Perl Testing Developers Notebook. It only took about six days to get here, but it still is three months ago, since I won. Of course this is no problem and I'm very happy with the new book.

I like to thank Josh, for the contest. Which was actually quite easy :).

I've started reading it and it looks like it contains real nice examples for perl testing. Some stuff that will be really useful, when I'm working on the webshop and the concert website.

Subject of my weblog

I'm not yet sure what this is, but it looks like some kind of end of the year post. But were still two weeks of.

Somehow a lot of my posts are about programming and computers. This is kind of stupid, because I do a lot of other stuff besides programming. While it may look like it, I'm a big fan of all kinds of punk, ska, rock'n roll and reggae music. This would become obvious if I went to more of those concerts, but their are hard to come by in this neighbourhood.

Even now I'm not programming, just being lazy, browsing the web and reading stuff. The idea is that it's reading instead of being lazy.

The current book I'm reading is Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The book is nice, but I'm still not done. When I'm done I'll be reading the rest of the Narnia stories, which my brother got from Sinterklaas.

In my abundant spare time I like to draw pencil pictures of things. I see it as practicing, while other people see it as dumb, ugly and stupid. I'm not going to say I'm good, because I'm not, but its good practice and helps my concentration and perception, like meditation.

I would also like to become a better writer, but I feel I'm not ready yet. While not feeling ready is a bit weird, because it's just a feeling. Meanwhile I write stuff like this on this website. Which may get better because of it. Practice makes perfect.

The rest of the time I try to be a better person. While I'm still not sure how to do that, I still try to do my best. Somehow I came to think that being a vegetarian is a good way to start, and it has been eight years already.

This was about it..., but let's not forget all the other things that I forgot to write.

Music Player Daemon

I thought about how a daemon program could be easy to use for playing music. So I started with some research by googling for 'music player daemon'. And the first result was a link to a program called 'Music Player Daemon'.

This program runs in the background and can be controlled with php based websites or a command line tool. This is nice separation of concerns. So I installed the package and tried it. I'm really impressed by how it works, especially with the client tools, that let me select the music. The thing that I don't like is that I have to create playlists. But with one playlist containing all the songs is easy to create.

mpc listall | mpc add

So that's kind of easy. It's also easy to create keybindings that call the client command line program. So now I have a button to skip to the next song.

Revenge of the Rock'n Roll Monsters Tour

Revenge of the Rock 'n Roll Monsters, what a show. This was best thing since some other concert. All the bands played really well, and it looked like they we're having fun. Which make the whole thing just better. It was very much worth the trip to Zwolle and the € 15,00.

Tonight we're going to Music For All Ears, which is organized by the saidia foundation. This organization helps motivated and talented students from developing countries to study in Groningen.

Also AliennatioN will play here. So it's maybe you should also take a look. It's only € 7,50.