“Welk nummer van Milk Inc. zou niet misstaan als naam voor een meubelzaak?”

Klik hierrrrr voor het antwoord. I LOL’d.

Ga uw gang met deze afbeelding, en post het resultaat van uw werk, bv. via e-mail (lodev [a] deze website) of op Twitter (tag even met #lolonard).

De eerste resultaten na de ‘jump’.

(by @krisbuytaert)

(by @roelvangils)

Nu is het aan U!

Wat doe je dan in zo’n geval, als je deze prachtige doelkans ziet?:

“Gaat zo eens kijken wat de buurt hier bied op culinair gebied.”

Welaan, dan denk je:

1. Thee is ook een soort drank, dus dat valt onder “culinair gebied”.
2. Er mankeert daar een “T”.
3. “T” klinkt als “Thee”
4. Binnenkoppen die handel:

“@de-persoon-die-de-vraag-stelde: T misschien?”

Om dan volgende reactie te krijgen:

“@lode Als je klaarkomt op mensen verbeteren op twitter is dat jou ding! Ik heb andere hobby´s! Maar val mij daar aub niet mee lastig.”

En dit komt dan van een persoon die op zijn blog proclameert:

“Het zei duidelijk, Twitter zit zonder zelfspot en humor! Op eieren moet je lopen voordat je een grap maakt. Zelfspot is voor mij nog steeds de beste humor die er is. Geen relativeringsvermogen: unfollow”

We zullen zijn goede raad dan maar opvolgen zeker? #unfollow.

It’s a bit unclear what features one should expect, besides speed, that OpenDNS doesn’t already offer.

Quick comparison:

• Google DNS servers are a bit easier to remember: the nameservers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. OpenDNS uses 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
• uses the global load balanced infrastructure by Google, which usually works very well and fast (unless they accidentially blackhole a part of the net) – OpenDNS has a somewhat similar distributed, albeit a bit smaller infrastructure.
• Google explicitly does not provide wildcard results to redirect users in case of typo’s. RFC purists will agree with Google that “Sometimes, in the case of a query for a mistyped or non-existent domain name, the right answer means no answer”. OpenDNS takes the opposite approach by providing users with search results when a page is offline.
• Google doesn’t seem to offer a feature like SmartCache that can show you cached versions of a page after it gets knocked offline due to Slashdotting/Fireballing

I’m going to try out GPDNS on a few systems and check the performance, but I’m not sure if I will use it as my primary DNS service any time soon.

Google Public DNS is another step in the way of Google becoming synonymous with “the web” or even “the net”.
As Laurie put it:
“Dear Google: you are supposed to be a site on the Internet, not be the entire Internet all by yourselves. Public trust only goes so far.”

Others agree that this seems a bit creepy. (Of course, OpenDNS has got its criticisms as well. - Gruber likes Google better.)

One thing to remember – take out your tinfoil hat:

Whilst Google’s motto is “don’t be evil” and their mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, they’re primarily an ad company.

They make money selling ads. Any tool that better helps them detect user patterns helps them to deliver even more targeted advertising. When you’re using the Google DNS servers, it’s trivially easy for them to ‘watch’ you even when you’ve cleared all your cookies and aren’t surfing on one of the many top web properties where they’re present, be it through an acquisition (Youtube), an ad deal (Myspace), the advertising network used (Doubleclick / Adsense) or one of the many free tools theyprovide that provide useful information, but also feed directly into their giant database. (Google Analytics).

Jason Kottke and John Gruber believe Google’s motives are speed, speed, speed. Their privacy policy regarding Google Public DNS sounds OK, so this might be true. Their track record however is not completely flawless. I don’t want to sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist. I’m just imagining the possibilities… (Man, now I even sound more like Glenn Beck )

One step further to EPIC?

Cougar Town, S02E09 – Here Comes My Girl (2009):
Jules (Courteney Cox, again) “saves” thanksgiving for all her friends who can’t make it home or whose families have fallen apart.
Andy – whilst eating a hamburger shortly before the big turkey dinner: “Thanksgiving is a food marathon. You have to warm up. This is like stretching.”

Really, ABC?

Last year I was in the market for new earbuds, after my second pair of Sony In-Ear headphones broke down.
My buddy Denny (whom I see IRL about as often as he blogs, which is way too seldom) recommended the Bose® In-Ear Headphones. I took his recommendation (even though the little f*ckrs are quite expensive) and have been very happy with the choice.

Shortly before my last USA trip, Bose released a version of the same headphones with an inline microphone, the Bose® Mobile In-Ear Headset. It’s compatible with most smartphones with standard jack connectors (and supplies adapters for brands with non-standard diameters).

It works great on the iPhone. The inline microphone also works as a button to pick up and hang up calls. It also functions as a remote control for the iPod application. ¹

The best thing about it though is that on the new-ish unibody MacBook, the headset actually works as a headset, which is great for Skype.

I’ve been wanting to do this ever since the iPhone first came out. At the time MacBooks still had a separate line-in and line-out, meaning the microphone part of iPhone headsets was ignored.

The 15″ and 17″ Unibody models still have separate line-in and line-out sockets, but apparently the line-out has a dual function on this models too. Yet another reason to treat yourself to a new laptop or at least a new headset for the holidays.
Update: The 13″ MacBook and 13″ MacBook Pro are at an all time low price now at Amazon (including free shipping), just in time for a happy thanksgiving!

The Los Angeles based clothing company is a favourite among designers for its high quality t-shirts that can be bought in bulk for screen printing. They pride themselves in being ‘locally produced’ (locally meaning the US) by well paid workers, as opposed to in a sweatshop in the far east. One well-known company that uses AA as a wholesale source is Threadless.

Cameron Moll is a renowned designer and author, known for amongst others his personal weblog Authentic Boredom, his book on Mobile Web Design, and the job site Authentic Jobs. I admire his work and count myself lucky for having viewed one of his talks in person. (Way back at @media 2006 in London.) Cameron takes offense at the advertising, which is “suggestive at best and explicit at worst”. He feels offended by this, and has decided to “put his money where is mouth is”. He will no longer use American Apparel as his source for t-shirts, nor buy any screened tee which is printed on AA materials.

American Apparel billboard by Flickr user @MSG

There are indeed some quite explicit ads, which I understand might be offensive to some, like Cameron. I completely respect that.

There’s more to this discussion though, as is evident in the comments that follow Cameron’s article. As you might know, Cameron was previously employed by one of the driving forces behind the campaign to amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, or as they call it “Preserving the Divine Institution of Marriage“.

While Cameron tries to “keep Church and State separate” in his blog posts and comments, I do feel this is relevant here.

On the one hand, if you look a bit further than the posters that seem to have been created by hormonally supercharged 16-year olds, you’ll see a company that, whilst being an “evil corporate chain“, cares for its workers and generally does the right thing.

Compare this to the writings, videos and ads you find in the LDS Newsroom devoted to Prop 8.

I’ll take over the top sleazy advertising over hateful half-truths and whole lies any day.

As my first name is Lode, I wanted to register the domain hack lo.de. I only read about this land rush at a couple of websites, so I anticipated some problems, namely domain registrars not knowing about the new rules. I contacted Namecheap support on thursday evening to check if they knew about this new restrictions starting today. The answer I got was quite clear, if not completely convincing: “Sure, we’ll be ready. You should be able to register directly through your account. Let me know if you’ve got any other questions.” The “should” part worried me a bit, so I prepared some backup plans.

At 9 AM I had different browser windows open, logged in to my different domain admin accounts and was ready to click “register”. I opened my accounts at OVH, Godaddy, Inforbusiness and Namecheap.

Unfortunately, all of the companies I tried with still checked according to the old DENIC restrictions.

I started searching for other .de agents, but all of them failed on me. XLhost.de, ODAC, even Register.be (I was that desperate at the time.)

At 9:05 I opened a support chat with Namecheap (as I know they have live support), to see if they could escalate. Sure enough, the operator -who seemed to be typing quite slowly- could manually register the domain for me.

The domain was still free at that time.

Three minutes later, I got: “unfortunately the domain is already registered.”

I missed it by a minute.

Thanks for nothing, domain “professionals” of the world.

Lesson learned: Next time, contact some real pros with personal service.

Up until recently, airplanes were one of the last places where you could spend some time being entirely disconnected from the outside world.

Sure, you could place satellite phone calls for $10 per minute, and for some time you could even surf the internet via satellite through Connexion by Boeing. Because of the $500.000 price tag to fit airplanes with the satellite service, the service was quite limited. “Gogo Inflight Internet” seems to have solved this issue. For domestic US flights this service uses cellular technology to equip planes with internet access. Cell towers from Aircell have been fitted with antennas that point upwards, and planes seamlessly hop from one tower to another as you’re in flight. The internet signal is distributed via standard Wi-Fi on the plane.

This is the first flight I’ve been on to offer this service, and I’m absolutely convinced of its value. The price for this 4 hour flight is $9.95. On top of a plane ticket of several hundred euros, this feels like a bargain. (Especially since I didn’t pay for the plane ticket )

The plane is equipped with 12V DC power ports. Luckily I’ve got a special cable to connect my laptop, so my battery won’t die before landing.

Being a techie, of course I had to try out the quality of the service. My friend Toon happily volunteered or a Skype video chat, him being in Belgium and me being somewhere over Iowa. The quality and latency were great. Sometimes there is some latency, probably during handovers to another tower, but all in all it’s pretty usable. (After testing Skype I noticed video chatting and other high-bandwidth services are apparently not allowed, though I don’t think I’m using other people’s bandwidth as I seem to be the only one using it on this flight. You are also asked to restrict yourself to “respectful internet browsing”. In other words: no porn on the plane, please.)

Remote desktop sessions over SSL-VPN work smoothly as well.

In-flight video chat

In-flight Wi-Fi speed test

After a transatlantic flight + layover of about 12 hours it’s nice to be able to check your e-mails and catch up on the news, but as John Troyer put it: “All you people streaming, skypeing, tweeting from your flights: you realize this means YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP WORKING EVER AGAIN”

He’s right, of course. But for a geek like me this still pushes the right buttons. (And I didn’t check my work e-mail. Yet.)

By the way, without logging in you can’t do much, except DNS lookups. I’ll try to get OpenVPN over UDP 53 running before my next Wi-Fi equipped flight (Wednesday Sep 9th from SFO to SEA). I’ll keep you posted.