Jeroens blog

About 10 months ago I moved to Gent (see blog post), and stayed at facilities provided by the university. Now that the school year is over, and I’m not a student any more, I have to move again. I’m getting my own studio in the Zebrastraat, which is where my mom currently lives. i’m staying at her place for about 2 weeks until my studio’s contract starts. Read as: free food and no dishes -> more programming time

Some pictures of me moving, taken with my new HTC desire <3:

My old setup, stripped down already for moving.

My printer, which I was hoping might just appear at it’s destination due to uncertainty, but no such luck.

My new, temporary, setup @ my moms place.

Obviously, my final setup at my own studio will be over 9000 times more awesome :d

I decided to finally become a paying member of two of Belgium’s three hackerspaces, which are Hackerspace Brussels, and Whitespace or 0×20, in Gent.

From Wikipedia [citation needed]: A hackerspace or hackspace (from Hacker and Space, also referred to as a makerspace or creative space) is a real (as opposed to virtual) place where people with common interests, usually in science, technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and collaborate. A hackerspace can be viewed as an open community lab, workbench, machine shop, workshop and/or studio where people of diverse backgrounds can come together to share resources and knowledge to build/make things.

Both spaces are totally awesome, earning over 9000 points on the awesomeness scale, even when holding only 2% of the overall awesomeness into account. Geeks, tech discussions, club mate and the airwolf theme playing every 5 minutes – what more could you want? Check out the wikis of the spaces if you are interested in joining one of the many upcoming awesome meetings/workshops/presentations.

Linkz

• Hackerspace Brussels
• Whitespace (0×20)
• Whitespace blog
• Hackerspace Antwerp
• List of hackerspaces

Whitespace would like to invite you to its opening weekend 19-21 March.

When: From Friday 19th of March to Sunday the 21st.
Where: Blekerijstraat 75, Gent, Belgium

Whitespace (0×20) is the first hackerspace in Ghent and will be opening its doors for the first time on the weekend of 19-21 March. The space is ready for launch, but far from finished: we’ve got a roof, multiple walls, and some cat5 and now we need more people to have fun with. Don’t know what a “hackerspace” is? Check http://hackerspaces.org We hope to see you drop by.

The agenda
The sechedule might undergo minor changes, so keep an eye on the wiki page.
Friday:

• 20:00: Opening drink, see the space, meet the locals, fun hacker partygames.

Saturday:

• 14:00 : OpenWRT presentation: a big os for small devices.
• 15:00 : Flashing for fun & profit (Bring your compatible wireless router (http://wiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/tableofhardware), Flash it! (don’t worry we’ll walk you trough).)
• 17:00 : Everything you always wanted to know about IPv6 but were afraid to ask.
• 18:00 : Open recipe burgers (with secret sauce).
• 21:00 : Evening entertainment: Powerpoint karaoke hosted by fs111.

After that : something involving liquids.

Sunday:

• 12:00 Hungry-Hacker is hungry. Breakfast.
• 15:00 lightning talks:Such diverse subjects as: Google Summer of Code, The talk too trollish to mention, How to get yourself a lot of work that you didn’t plan by being creative, Something about something, Awesome talk will be awesome, … (open stage, schedule will be on the wiki, add your lightning talk there).

Registration
Is not necessary but it would be nice to give us an idea on how many of you to expect so we have enough chairs and secret sauce. Please add your name: http://www.doodle.com/bg5x7xrbcg5z9h8q. Feel free to invite your friends.

More info
Check out our wiki at 0×20.be, follow us on twitter and join the #0×20 irc channel on freenode.

I’m just back from Arrrrcamp Gent 2009. Arrrr stands for “About Ruby, Rails, Radiant and Rum”, and is obviously about the programming language Ruby and 2 of it’s most popular web frameworks. This years edition took place right in front of my door, in the Zebrastraat, Gent. I followed 2 of the main presentations, and 4 visitor presentations, in essence similar to lightning talks.

The most interesting talk for me was about JRuby, an implementation of Ruby I’m considering to learn and use. I also gained a lot more insights in how Rails works, and into the more general Ruby community. Some other very interesting things I wasn’t really aware of, like GIT, the real-time web and push technology where also mentioned in the talks.

The previous 2 days I haven’t been on-line cause I moved home from Hulst, The Netherlands, to Gent, Belgium. My mom now lives at the zebrarstraat, where I will also stay regularly. I’m actually amazed that I’m still alive, and my mom didn’t kill anyone with the moving truck.

In a few weeks I’ll also move my stuff over to some social home of the university, where I will stay during the school year. I’m going to attempt to make it the place with highest concentration of pc stuff in the whole city