Let’s cut right to the chase and get to the root of what I think is the problem of haters and people who seem to have forgotten how the landscape looked like. First there was the PC world and there was this tiny company that made shiny white fruit-logo computers that almost nobody cared about. Apple was in fact ‘nothing‘.

If anybody talked about tablets, what you thought off looked like this. Right?

This was referred to as tablets, tablet pc’s, tablet computers, etc. They used to run plain old Windows with some kind of touch support. I haven’t ever used them but I’m pretty sure they weren’t all that practical… Or mobile.

Then in 2010, along came the iPad.

The buzzword Apple used to describe this device was ‘magical‘. And it somehow was. Because never before has there been a tablet that made it into so many people’s homes and companies. Especially in so little time. Apple redefined the word ‘mobile‘. Apple bet on smaller tablets with a more lightweight OS, that looks nothing like previous tablet OS’s. They decided to drop the hardware keyboard completely, together with ethernet, USB slots and everything else that was not 100% vital for the product to work. The iPad was a huge success and in a matter of 80 days they had sold 3 millions iPads.

And then all of a sudden tablets from other manufacturers looked like this.

Yea, all looking a lot like the iPad. Thin, small devices, no hardware keyboard, almost all of them sporting some kind of lightweight mobile OS, completely optimized for touch. Personally I don’t mind: Why should I? Apple made a good move; created a product that people actually like to use. Other companies are now building similar products and I have more choice than ever. Great innovation shouldn’t be in the hands of one company. Good stuff gets copied. And that’s great for the consumer.

Earlier today I saw this post by John Gruber about Samsung now selling SD card reader connectors for their tablets. As it turns out they look exactly like the Apple ones, only they’re black. I tweeted about this, wondering why Samsung might be doing this? Minutes later I got a response, saying the same thing that many others have been saying about the whole style-copying thing: How could they possibly make it look differently? 

So all of a sudden Apple is just using the most simple design style in the world that is so obvious and yet everybody else fails to use it unless Apple leads the way… I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. Sure, Apple is using a simple, sleek design on its current products that couldn’t be any more basic but their designs are quite unique when first released. And only weeks/months later, the competition comes up with products that look just like Apple’s because how else could they design it?

Again: I’m not judging Samsung (and every other company for that matter) for doing it: It’s the right way to go. If you can’t beat them, join them. But nobody can deny that (in this case) Samsung is just blatantly copying Apple. And if your excuse is “How else could they possibly design it?“, go back to the beginning of this post and ask yourself: “How could Apple possibly make a tablet that looks different than the pre-Apple established tablet spectrum?”
Exactly.

Just about a year ago I was sitting in this very spot, behind my computer, working about 20 hours per day to make the most important deadline of my life. I was working my ass off to create my demoreel. I worked 10 days straight. No breaks. Little sleep. No compromises. I set out to create something cool and I promised myself I wouldn’t settle for anything less. Towards the end of the project I was exhausted; close to the edge of throwing in the towel and giving up. I was lucky to have my girlfriend around that day because she was able to talk sense into me. She gave me that last little push so I’d finish what I’ve wanted to create for so long. And boy, it was worth it. She proved that I can do anything as long as I give everything. For that, I am grateful.

A few weeks later my dad called me to say he’s moving back to Luxemburg. Those of you who know me a bit better, know that I haven’t had a good relationship with my dad. So him moving away for good was actually good news. At the same time, it meant that he’d be selling the house I grew up in. That was quite hard for me, even though I haven’t been there much during the past 5 years.
A lot of strange things happened around that time. In the end I decided to take a step back from everything in order to get my life back in order.

A few weeks later we ( = Devine & NMCT students from the Howest University) went to San Francisco. Unlike many people, I turned out to experience San Francisco exactly as I always imagined it. I was always dreaming about moving to the States one day… You know: The kind of childhood dream that never let’s go. When I got back from San Francisco, I knew for sure: One day, I’ll move there. Visiting the USA was one of those things I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do for a very long time. One dream checked off the list.

While we were in San Francisco, we had the privilege of visiting many companies and even present our own work at some of them. When we were visiting Momentum Design Lab, I took a shot and presented my – at that point unfinished – Preso-project. I showed the strengths of the project while carefully covering up the buggy and sometimes missing parts. After my improvised presentation, a man came up to me and give my his business card while he said “When you’re back home, get in touch with me. We’ll talk”. The card said David Thomson. I looked up to him and asked him, who exactly he is. “I’m the CEO”. A week later, back in Belgium, I sent him an email. And while nothing big came out of that email-conversation, that one moment – when he gave me his card – gave me some kind of new energy: “I can do way better than that… And this guy is sold… Just wait until you see what I can do when I really stretch my legs“. Sure, it wasn’t a big international company we all have heard a lot about. But it left a major impression.

Then, on June 1st, I got a phone call saying that one of my best friends, Sarah, had died in a car accident. I still remember that day vividly. I remember being confused. It felt like one big nightmare. To this day I still don’t really grasp how she can be gone. I remember going to a movie with her just a few days earlier. She had this beautiful smile that would make every day seem a little better than the last. Everybody loved her.
That very day, I realized how fragile life really is. I miss you, Sarah. Every single day.

A few weeks later, while my girlfriend was doing her internship at Saatchi & Saatchi Brussels, she was telling me about the problems they were having to get a few banners produced. Apparently they were moving big budgets, just to get a few banners out. I was blown away. I told her to suggest me to create future banners. I would deliver within a few days (instead of weeks) for half the budget. And I would get it right straight away. Only days later I got a call from Saatchi. And yes: The very next morning at 7AM I delivered my first set of banners. I hoped to get a lot more work from them soon. But I didn’t.

Summer started and I went to Westende, to the empty house where I once grew up. I stayed there for a month while doing a summer job. I started wondering if I’d really wanted to stay in the digital industry. By the end of the summer -back in Kortrijk – I was about to apply for a job at an Apple Store in Ghent. I really thought about working in a store, instead of studying and creating cool stuff. So my girlfriend stepped in: “I’m tired of you just waiting and being unhappy. I’m tired of you not doing your thing! Prove yourself, god damned. It’s what your good at. Do what makes you happy. I miss the old you“. So, I recovered. For the 2nd time. I took a good look at my life. I had to figure out what I wanted to do…

A few days later, one of my lecturers – the one I liked and hated most at the same time – pointed it out to me: “Being a student has made you lazy. You’re getting too comfortable around here“. He was right. I had received numerous job offers from pretty big companies during the past 5 years. The first time I turned a job down was because I might need a bachelor degree if I ever wanted to become a lecturer myself. However, I can’t remember why I turned all the others down. Yes, he was right. I had gotten too comfortable. And it didn’t make me happy. Not even a bit. A few weeks later I decided to quit Devine, the university and my life as a student altogether.

I decided to start off as a freelancer and just see where things would go from there. It was a scary time in my life as I didn’t know the road ahead. There was no turning back from here. A week later I found myself doing some work for Saatchi & Saatchi again. This time at a pretty steady rate. At some point I had to jump in for a ‘tiny project‘. I still remember the words “Do you know something about expandable banners and video?”
I turned out to be building an MSN homepage take-over using Google’s DoubleClick Studio for 14 countries.
I had only half a day to figure out how DoubleClick Studio works and learn to use the custom-made components by Google. And everything had to be done by monday. I was briefed the Friday before. A lot of responsibility was resting on my shoulders. By Friday night I was pretty sure I could do it… But I was pretty much freaking out. What kind of budget is going up in smoke if I miss this deadline!? 14 countries? Are you crazy!? I went out with friends to have a drink and get my mind off work for an hour. But what I actually did was realizing that this was what I actually loved doing: I make things move. I create stuff. And I will meet the deadline.
By saturday morning 10AM I was done with the master files and I could finally get some sleep. They would be translated by the next day. By monday everything would be ready.

Not too long after that, I went to the Saatchi offices in Brussels where I met with one of the creative directors. I was trying to promote myself in order to make sure they would hire me more often for even bigger projects. Instead I walked out there with a job offer as a full-time project manager. We all know how that ended.
Today is the end of my 5th week at Saatchi & Saatchi Brussels (Yes, I have a day off today).

They say that time flies. Yes, it does. And it flies very fast. This year went by so fast, I can’t believe that within less than 36 hours we’re in 2012 already…

What has 2011 thought me?

• No matter how tough you think you are: sometimes it’s not enough. Luckily you have friends who will pull you through it, kicking and screaming.
• Don’t get comfortable. It makes you lazy. If something scares you, it probably means you’re on the right track. Just keep going and hope for the best.
• Do what you believe will make you happy. Don’t let nobody talk you out of it. If they do, you’ll do the safe thing. Something that won’t make you entirely happy… And it will slowly kill your inner child.
• Never hold back to tell your friends and family how much you love them. You don’t know what might happen tonight…. Maybe tomorrow it might be too late. They deserve to know how amazing you think they are.

Over the past few months I have done several freelance projects for Saatchi & Saatchi. I’m not allowed to disclose what I worked on but I totally loved working on these projects. They were massive fun and challenging. Totally up my alley.

About a month ago I went to the Saatchi & Saatchi office in Brussels to meet some of the people I worked with and show some of my other work in order for them to consider me for even more (and maybe bigger) projects. They responded by offering me a fulltime job.

I’m pleased to tell you guys I’ll be working at Saatchi & Saatchi Belgium as a project manager alongside many fun and very talented people.

Saatchi & Saatchi, also known as The Lovemarks Company, is a global advertising agency with over 140 offices in 80 countries. That international spirit clearly shows in the Brussels office where I talked to several people who turned out to be English, French and even Italian. And now there’s also one guy from Luxemburg.

I’m totally looking forward to this new adventure. Wish me luck!

Today will go down in history as “The beginning of the end“. Adobe undermined their own platform by killing the very technology that (only months before) they claimed made “the full web” possible on a mobile device. That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in their future promises.

To be honest I never really toyed around with Flash on mobile for the very simple reason: I’m an iOS user. Yup, no Flash Player for me on my iDevice. And you know what: The only thing I realized was how many people/companies used Flash where HTML/JS was a valid alternative. This kind of pushed me away from the Flash platform, I guess.
I went to focus my energy on Javascript, Jquery, NodeJS and Objective-C. However I did still keep up with the evolution of the Flash Platform as it was the very reason I got into this industry. I was just waiting for the next big thing in Flash which would make me go back.

What Adobe did today seems to me like proof that they will tell us anything to make us stick around. They now say they’ll refocus their energy on Flash/AIR on desktop and AIR on mobile devices… Sure, but they also told us they’d perfect the mobile Flash Player and bring the full web to the mobile browser. Who’s to say they don’t drop the Flash Platform altogether within the next 12-24 months?

To me, the future of the Flash Platform has become very uncertain. And it seems I’m not alone. That’s why I won’t be spending a lot of my spare time on it anymore.

Thank you Flash. You brought me into this industry, you enabled me to do things I didn’t even know I wanted to do, you connected me with many people and you gave me opportunities in life I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
You were a good friend to me but times change and we all have to move on.
Thanks for the great memories.
Godspeed.

I love the way you can see the entire process of existing music being transformed into new audio goodness. Old records get dumped into The Machine which are then melted and filtered through a breathtaking lady. The endresult is what you hear on Radio Soulwax. Very very cool!

I’d love to see a ‘behind the scenes‘ of this clip. I’m so intrigued by the machines used here and I can’t stop wondering which parts are real and which ones are not. Can’t seem to find anything though. Too bad!

However, that post by Ted Dziuba had me wondering. Is he right? Probably. He seems like a very smart man and considers many things I didn’t even think off. However, that fibonacci example had me confused. Why did that call take so long. Many days have passed since the original post and I never spent more than a few seconds wondering.

Until tonight. I was wondering what the general consensus was about NodeJS and came across a number of posts referring to Ted’s writing. This one in particular had me taken in. Here, Joshua Kehn takes the analog of the given fibonacci example and translates it to a few other programming languages. The result? Every other language shows this massive waiting behavior. After reading this I had to find out: WHAT IS GOING ON!?

How can figuring out the 40th number of the fibonacci sequence take several seconds!? So I wrote a quick test in Javascript (read: I copy-pasted Ted’s code) and ran it in the browser.

function fibo1(n){
	if(n < 2){
		return 1;	
	}	
	else{
		return fibo1(n-2) + fibo1(n-1);
	}
}
var result = fibo1(40);
document.write('Result : ' + result);

3.08 seconds. Holy shit… At this point I was hooked. How!? Why!? This looks like reasonable code… Let the computer calculate what needs to be calculated and return the result as soon as possible, right… Can’t be more than about 50-60 function calls… I took the liberty to count the number of function calls…

var fcalls=0;
function fibo1(n){
	fcalls++;
	if(n < 2){
		return 1;	
	}	
	else{
		return fibo1(n-2) + fibo1(n-1);
	}
}
var result = fibo1(40);
document.write('Result : ' + result + '&lt;br/&gt;Function calls: ' + fcalls);

331 160 281 function calls!? That’s 331 million function calls. Are you freakin’ kidding me!? For the 40th number in the fibonacci sequence. WHAT THE HELL!?

At this point I was doubting my own skills in writing a valid step counter in Javascript before actually believing that this many function calls were actually being executed. However that would explain the 3 second delay… Wait, what!? 3 seconds? To execute a mindblowing 331 million function calls? (It is worth noting that Sheldon Cooper was wrong: Once your mind is blown, it can be re-blown.)

But… Joshua correctly stated a mistake by Ted, which is that Ted’s fibonacci algorithm is incorrect. Let’s fix that…

var fcalls=0;
function fibo1(n){
	fcalls++;
	if(n < = 2){
		return 1;	
	}	
	else{
		return fibo1(n-2) + fibo1(n-1);
	}
}
var result = fibo1(40);
document.write('Result : ' + result + '&lt;br/&gt;Function calls: ' + fcalls);

Hey! Look at that! Only 204 668 309 function calls! That’s a solid 130 million calls less. The execution time dropped by a second too! Only 2.1 second execution… Still: That’s a long time and that is still an INSANE amount of calls.

At this point I decided I was done with this crap. This implementation sucks royal rastaballs. Whoever thought the above was clever programming needs to stay off the drugs and reconsider his carreer choices.
I remember writing fibonacci generators in high school, almost 10 years ago, and they didn’t take long. In fact: They were instantanious. Tell you what: I’ll just try it the old fashioned way… The human way.

function fibo2(n){
	var current = 0;
	var previous1 = 0;
	var previous2 = 1;
	for(var i=0;i < n;i++){	
		//previous 1 + previous2 = current
		previous1 = previous2;				
		previous2 = current;
		current	 = previous1 + previous2;
	}
	return current;	
}
var result = fibo2(40);
document.write('Result : ' + result);

Hey, look at that! Almost no execution time! The result was there like *snap* that. In fact Javascript tells me it took between 0.000 and 0.001 seconds…  And the fibonacci result is the same… What does that tell us?

Well, of course: The fibonacci example was a demonstration that NodeJS will in fact block. But how is that different from any other language. In fact, the only thing proven here is that NodeJS (actually the V8 Javascript engine) computes fairly quickly compared to PHP for example.

What I’d like to add here is that OF COURSE by writing BULLSHIT code, you can make any runtime block, stumble, freeze and turn to complete utter bollocks. What the fuck is the matter with you? If this is your argument, then frankly you should’ve kept it to yourself because the rest of the world already knows this.

This doesn’t only apply for NodeJS, it applies to ANY PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE: Writing crappy code will return crappy performance. This is nothing new: It’s common sense. Programming is a mental challenge and it will always stay that way. If you try to prove something by pointing out that bad programming results in bad performance, then perhaps you should reconsider the usage of the word ‘braindead‘ in some more appropriate context.

I’m sorry but the fibonacci example in Ted’s post is a ‘bad example’ to prove a valid point. Yes, NodeJS will in fact block. However the example seemed more like an example of how bad code can provoke bad performance. That’s not an argument. That’s a fact.
By writing good better code, I fixed the example and it runs fine now. And yet that doesn’t invalidate Ted’s point about blocking. (See why this is a pointless argument?)

I just wanted to have this out in the open. Made me nuts when I figured this out. And I still maintain I have no opinion about NodeJS and how bad it might be.

You can see a testpage with the different calculations here.

Choose one of the proxies located in one of the countries where Spotify launched, then fill in the details in your proxy settings on your computer, head over to the Spotify website and register an account. Once your account is set up, you can disable the proxy settings: Spotify works worldwide once you have an account. You will have to log in once every 14 days from the country where you registered your account.

That’s where the TUVPN proxy comes in again. However: the proxy login details expire every week so you have to get a new one but since it’s free easy to get and very reliable, I’d say it’s worth the effort.

Extra tip: If you consider paying for a Spotify premium account: Choose a US based proxy; not UK or European. That will allow you to pay 10$ instead of 10£ or 10€
Update:  It has been pointed out to me by Andy Jacobs that you won’t be able to get a premium subscription unless you have a credit card in one of the allowed countries.

Side note: The paid TUVPN subscriptions are very affordable. If you’re a Turntable.FM addict, or you’d like to use other US-only services, you might want to consider subscribing since a paid subscription allows you to stream as much data as you want. The free proxy account is capped at 1GB/week

Enjoy!

I love it because it looks so real and so fake, all at the same time. The calm and romantic lighting versus the exploding foreground results in a truly dramatic setting. The poem and the soundtrack give a very emotional feel to the whole piece. It kind of carries the 2 characters through the slowmotion explosions until they meet. The cut right before the kiss is kind of a cliché… Although it’s the only cliché that would work, so it’s actually perfect.

I like this clip so much, I think I’ve watched it more than 20 times by now. It just doesn’t get boring. Every time I hit the play button, I kind of hope it just wouldn’t end. So amazingly beautiful.

This piece really look stunning. If you’re interested in how and why some things are done, here’s a short ‘making of‘ featuring exactly the kind of stuff that matters.

This trailer looks awesome. It features great effects, realistic lighting, very cool movements, motion capturing, some great music and an overload of badass-ness… Everything is in place to make sure one is interested in the actual game. The amount of detail in the clip is off the charts. That’s what sells the piece. The quality actually reminds me of Toy Story. And that’s quite a feat for small studio compared to Pixar. Absolutely awesome.