Personal

This post is part of a series on hosting your Hugo website on Azure. Keep an eye on this website for future articles. Intro As you might have seen or read somewhere, I’ve migrated the previous version of my personal website, which was in WordPress, to the current one that is made in Hugo. One of the reasons for migrating away from WordPress was the fact that due to a vulnerability in one of the WordPress modules, spammers were able to use my account to send out a lot of mails.

I am humbled and very proud to be awarded a Microsoft Azure MVP award today. A big “thank you” to all who helped me get here. 🙏🏻 A special thank you to my employer Betabit who supports me putting lots of effort into the community and helps organize or sponsor events. It’s strange but very cool to see social media ’explode’ (at least according to my standards) after my announcement. But I’m still just Rick, a guy who loves to do fun things with code, in the cloud.

As I wrote earlier I presented at the 2014 Dutch Techdays. The session content is now available online. Find it here (Dutch): Session information + PDF of my presentation My presentation on SlideShare My session on Channel 9

I’m proud to announce that this year I’ll be speaking at the TechDays in the World Forum in Den Haag, April 16 – 17. This session will be about High Performance Computing in Windows Azure. Camera resolutions keep increasing, your digital behavior on websites and in apps is collected, images that satellites make get more and more detailed and (research) equipment produces more data. The amount of data that’s being stored keeps increasing.

Just a small post today: as of September first I joined Betabit (site is in Dutch). After having had several employers in the last few years, this feels like coming home. On our way to do nice things…!

As of December first I’ll be joining the ranks of Valid (www.valid.nl – Dutch website). I’m very excited to start over there and I am convinced we will be able to do great stuff together 🙂 I would also like to take this opportunity to thank BDO (www.bdo.nl) for the past period and wish them all the best with the plans for the future of ‘our’ system. Update 14 Jan 2011

As you probably know I’ve worked for my own company for quite a while (see my post ‘A new challenge’ of October first 2008). Because business was good, I had way too little time to keep this blog up to date. Sorry for that… Since the beginning of this month, that all has changed: I joined BDO) and can now work ’normal’ hours in stead of ‘I-own-my-own-company-and-have-to-make-every-minute-of-every-day-count’ hours. I’ll probably still be pretty busy, but there’s a difference between busy and busy… 😉

Of course, twitter has been around for quite a while. The popularity of the service is booming, because it is becoming more and more mainstream now. I myself joined somewhere in the end of 2007, when it was still underground … 😜 Do you (actively) use twitter? And if so, what’s your account, do you use it on your desktop / laptop / mobile device … and which client(s) do you use?

I’m reinstalling my laptop after I got it back from a repair… EMPTY (grrr). What tools shouldn’t I forget when preparing this laptop to be my development machine? Already have Visual Studio, SQL Management Studio, Office and the Windows Live tools installed… (and of course I have all kinds of tools at hand from my server like DebugView, Reflector and whatnot)

I know it has been a while since my last post, but I’m about to resurface! I’ve played in a musical the entire month of December and (because of that) we were busy getting our company up and running again in the new year. So now I’ll be developing more and I’ll probably have more things to blog about. So keep posted to see more stuff over here … For now, here are some interesting articles about Microsoft’s Surface:

I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks. Between (the announcements at) all the Conferences to follow like PDC and Tech·Ed, all the projects to do, the rehearsal for the musical I’m in in December(Dutch) and the start of our new company(Dutch), I didn’t have a lot of time to blog… Since we expect things to settle down in the next couple of days, I’m expecting to pick up where I left in a week or so.

As of today, I am no longer working for Avanade. I had a good time over there, but my personal goals changed. I found a new challenge: I started a company with a good friend of mine. We’re still building the website, so the information is not there yet. But it will be soon. So check the websiteevery now and again. We’re very excited and can’t wait to get started!

I only had time for a quickie: The page containing all my online profiles has been updated… When interested, have a look at them{.null}.

It’s been a while because I’ve been so busy lately, but the next (technical) step for my personal website is now online. When browsing to https://rickvandenbosch.net/blog/, the content of my blog here is displayed sort of mirrored over there. I used an OpenSource RSS component to read my private rss feed from blogging about, and display it from there. There’s still a lot of work to be done (like styling!), but I’ll get there.

This weekend we got back from a skiing trip we went on with the school my girlfriend works at. We had a great time! The kids were great, and so were the teachers and the Huski people who were there to teach the kids how to ski and snowboard. If they need an extra pair of hands next year, I hope they’ll consider me: I’d be happy to join them.{.}

I won’t be blogging for the next week. Tomorrow evening, we are going on a ski vacation! I was invited to join the skicamp my girlfriend is going on with her work. A nice opportunity to brush up my skiing skills. Let’s hope we’ll come back in one piece, but I’m counting on it 😉 I’ll catch you guys later.

Until the Zune is available in Europe (when will that be, if ever…), I’m using an iPod. To be honest, I’m pretty satisfied with the product although iTunes still doesn’t feel like a solid piece of software… (understatement anyone?)After lots of hours playtime the original earphones of my iPod died, or at least the right one did. I went through the Apple store and found the ‘original’ earphones over there. Because of the annoying squeaky sound the cord makes in the inside of the lower part of the earphone, I wanted to try different ones.

So that’s part 1: www.rickvandenbosch.net is now online. There’s nothing to be found over there yet, but the domain has been delivered. Oh, and there’s an easy redirect to my blog, so that goes back here ;). From now on, you can also use rickvandenbosch.net/blog as the url to find my blog. I’m currently talking to the bloggingabout.net admin to mirror my content over there, for now it’s just a redirect.

Dennis already blogged about it: we had some problems with the availability of BloggingAbout since last night. The error was fixed this afternoon, so everything should be back to normal. If you’re experiencing any difficulties, please let me know through the contact form, or mail me at rick.van.den.bosch[at]bloggingabout.net.

Today was the first of two introduction days at Avanade{.}. Maybe you missed it, but I started there today{.}. And that’s why I’m writing this blogpost from a hotel in Almere, using my new Avanade laptop. 😉 I’m sure there will be lots of stuff to blog about, so stay tuned for more…

All the best for the year 2008! I hope we will be hearing/reading a lot of each other this year 😉

I’m thinking of hosting a blog myself. Most important reason would be that bloggingabout.net doesn’t allow some stuff like scripts, embedding flash and links to things like the ‘connect with me’ buttonand so on. Which is completely understandable by the way. What I’m not sure about is which software to use. Do you guys have any tips on which blogging software to use? Or maybe even on if I should or shouldn’t host it for myself?

Recently I put up a list of my Xbox 360 games. I’ll try to keep it up to date. I must say it’s difficult to choose which game to get next. There are so many good titles out! Assassins Creed, Need for Speed ProStreet, Call of Duty 4 Modern warfare, and more… Want to join me when gaming online? My gamertag is OZGump (see my gamercard).

As of 01-01-2008, I’m joining Avanade. You might have heard Avanade opened an office in the south of The Netherlandsthe first of November. I’ll be joining the ranks over there (Eindhoven!) and I am exited to get started. I spent the past years at LogicaCMG. I had a lot of fun and, even more important, I learned a lot. I’ll miss the guys (and girls!) I worked with, but I’m sure I will keep in touch with some of them.

Back in July, Barry Goffe (Director Windows Vista Ultimate) mentionedthat the missing Extras identified in January would be released at the end of the summer. I just got a bit curious about when these Extras would finally be released, so I visited windowsultimate.comagain. And there it was: DreamScene was releasedrecently (September 25th). And although I’m not quite sure if I’ll use this ever day, it’s kind of a cool feature. Isn’t it?

WOW The single player mode feels like a multiplayer game, with excellent gameplay. Certain parts of the game are pretty creepy, and I like it that there are some surprising elements in there. Sometimes you expect something to happen, which doesn’t. And when you least expect it…. So the (story in the) game is original. That makes a game interesting to play. One of the things I like a lot is that you can use almost everything your opponents use, like vehicles and weapons

So, after some relaxing at home and a very cool holiday in Spain, I’m about to go to work again next monday. And with that, I’ll be picking up all my ’normal day’ hobbies and stuff. So, I’ll try and pick up blogging (and taking pictures) again, just for you guys ;). Stay tuned … !  Hey! Ho! Let’s Go ..

As you may know, I started out at blogger. I haven’t used that blog over there for the last two years, but now it is up and running again{.}! This time, I’m using it as my photo blog. I recently got my new camera, and I didn’t want to mix picture-posts with my software development related posts over here. So if you’re interested, go take a look over there. Next to the link earlier in this post, you can find a link @ the news section of this site, in the left sidebar.

Last tuesday evening I ordered them, and just over an hour ago they came in: my new toys. I’m talking about my brandnew Canon EOS 400D!!! I started out with the kit lens (18-55), and I’ll get going with that, trying some stuff with this lens. And I just might order another in the future, but you have to start somewhere, right 😉 I immediately made some shots, and I’m glad I bought the camera already.

A while ago I wrote about my laptop not wanting{.} to connect to the internet or an Exchange Server. Two days later, I thought I found{.} the updates which were the cause of all this. It wasn’t exactly true, but in the end everything worked… Because of that, I let it go for a few days. But after a while, I couldn’t help myself: I had to know the real reason for the problem.

I found the two updates which crippled{.} my laptop’s Windows installation. After uninstalling and re-installing lots of updates, it seems that these two updates caused the problem: – Update for Windows Vista (KB936825)This wasn’t the one. The problem was back this morning. 🙁 I’ll be checking this out later today. – Update for Outlook 2007 (KB933493) Re-installing them causes the same problems to occur: Outlook can’t connect to Exchange and IE7 can’t display any webpages.

I took the test Adel blogged about. And guess what? I’m binary! Does this mean I’m 1337? 😉 Which Programming Language are You?

I ran into a nice little riddle on thinkgeek.com{.} today (in the shirts section). If you enjoy silly humor: take a look over there. How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex? For the answer, select the box below… 57006. (dead is 57005 in hex. Add 1 for you and there you are: 57006)

It took me a while, but in the end everything worked out and life’s good… Most important changes are I have my very own server now, containing all the general stuff like mail, music, development stuff and that kind of data. My workstation received a small update (I was able to upgrade based on the ‘old’ machine of a friend) and is now running Vista quite smoothly. To be honest, I haven’t found any major issues yet.

It’s been a while since I blogged, because… – I started a new (exciting but busy) project building a technical framework (and ‘proving’ a reference architecture along the way). – it looks like I might become a published writer when I hand in my article for the Dutch .NET magazine anywhere in the next couple of weeks. – we had lot’s of meetings @ LogicaCMGlately, like the yearmeeting, an architect meeting, a funmeeting (bowling can be cool!

Today I changed the appearance of my blog. The header has changed, and the content part is much wider. Because of the self-made banner I think this is a little more personal. Or a little less ordinary, whichever you prefer. If you have any feedback, please let me know. I think it’s pretty sweet, although this won’t show up pretty in a resolution below 1280 x 1024… Ah well, I think most people in our line of work will meet this requirement.

It seems there’s something to be celebrated today, so my girlfriend went and bought this little gem for me called the Gear4 HouseParty II. Its design is pretty cool, and I must say the quality of the sound comming out of that little box (approx. 25 cm wide) is pretty stunning! It comes with docks for all iPods (except for the shuffle) and even has its own remote, which lets you skip songs, change the volume and even use the iPod menu.

After managing to dodge tags for quite some time, I’ve been tagged twice this week. Both PJ van de Sandeand Marcel Boersmatagged me, so here we go… **We named our cat after a dog ** Our cat’s name is ‘Dribbel’, which is the Dutch name for the dog ‘Spot’. The most important reason for naming the cat like that, is because of a big white spot on its back and a smaller black spot on its nose.

It’s almost here… Next monday me and about 30 LogicaCMG colleagues will be heading to Redmond. I’m pretty excited: we’ll be attending some pretty cool sessions, and some of us will get the opportunity to take a look at Microsofts vision of the future home in their Microsoft Home. Besides that I’ll stay a few days longer, so I can see something of America. My first trip over there ever … !

Maybe I mentioned it earlier: I play in a musical in the month December (Veldhovense Revue). We started rehearsing twice a week in March. Now, we’ve played 4 shows already, and we’ve got 10 more to go. We’ve been really busy the last couple of weeks to make it a great show, and I think we succeeded. Anyway, I just wanted to mention the reason for me not blogging so much lately.

I tried using Windows Live Writer as soon as it got out, but because of proxy settings at the company I was working publishing posts wasn’t possible. I only now got time to try it at home, because I’ve been at home ill the past days. I’m still not 100% well, but I’ll keep quiet to get well soon. So maybe it’s better if I go and rest now… By the way: nice writing software, Windows Live Writer!

I’m back again. The past four weeks I’ve been entertaining kids on a summer camp (one week) and we’ve moved into our new house! After lots of painting, demolition and other stuff, our new house is ready (enough) to live in. In the near future, our new furniture will arrive and our bathroom will be renewed. So: lots of upcoming milestones! A note on the serious side: bloggingabout.net is being spammed heavily.

The next couple of weeks there will be low activity on my blog. First, I’ll be guiding a total of almost 100 kids through a summercamp for a week (we’re leaving today), next we will start working on our new house! We get the key a week from monday, so that’s two days after we come back from camp. Two days of resting…… I hope 😉 I might get back once in a while, maybe even publishing some pics about the ‘renovation’, but since this is a .

Lots of stuff happened the past few months, so it’s time for a personal update. Here we go… I’ll be attending an MSF4 Agile Masterclass @ Microsoft in July In August my girlfriend and I will be the proud owners of a house in Grasrijk (a part of Eindhoven). We can’t wait … ! Because of this, our apartment in Eindhoven is for sale right now (for pictures and info: www.

I’m not blogging about the wellknown song by the Dutch band Lucifer from the year 1975, but to let you know we (my girlfriend and me) have bought a new house! Somewhere in August of this year, we will be the proud owners of a house in ‘Grasrijk’, a new part of Eindhoven right next to Veldhoven. After three-somewhat years in our current home we are ready for the next step.

I’ve received lot’s of positive reactions on the post about organizing a bloggingabout.net meeting. I’ll try to squeeze in organizing a meeting in the near future. But see the near future somewhere between now and a few months. As you can image lot’s of stuff should be taken care of: a place to have the meeting, food & drinks, a decent agenda and maybe even guestspeakers. And to keep everything affordable for all the visitors: maybe we should consider finding a sponsor.

I’ve been thinking: would there be any interest for a bloggingabout .net meeting among the bloggers? We are all into .NET and most of us seem to enjoy a good discussion. Maybe we can organize a platform for those discussions in real life in stead of through posts and comments. It could be about anything, but has to have a predefined agenda to make sure the meeting has a goal.

After years of loyal service, I’m going to sell my current digital camera. I’m interested in buying an even better one (7.1 MP), although the Sony DSC-S85 I have now (4.1 MP) has brought me lots of great pictures. It accompanied me on several holidays and events. I’ve got a few Gb of images to show for it…. 😉 If anyone’s interested in buying it: drop me a line or visit the advert on markplaats.

Sometimes things aren’t as difficult as they seem… After some extra reading, and searching on gathering.tweakers.net, I found that everything I had done was correct. The only uncertainty was my graphics card. I went out and bought me a faster one (a Radeon 9550) and everything works well! As I am typing this, the same machine is playing a sweet K’s Choice song and recording a TV show, while displaying media center on my TV without any problems.

Ramon’s tips helped me a bit further, because they enabled me to test some of the settings and try where the problem is. I now encounter a very nice but weird phenomenon: when I use DualView on my NVidia card, I can drag Media Center to my TV. This works and shows up properly. When I maximize Media Center the image is all garbled up. But: when I open another window (this can be anything: notepad, display properties or the DirectX Control Panel (By the way: thanks for that one Ramon!

It’s been a while since I’ve been blogging, because my project has been extremely hectic. Now I’m enjoying a week off, so I’ve got time for toys now… 😉 One of these toys was going to be Windows XP Media Center Edition. I installed it, bought a compatible TV card together with a MCE remote and yep: everything is working fine. At least, as long as I am watching it on my monitor.

I’m having a good weekendstart today: I took an exam for Rational Unified Process this afternoon, and passed with a score of 91%! I am now an IBM certified Rational Unified Process professional. Sweet.

We landed in Eindhoven this morning after a great holiday in Turkey. I’ve done some resting, got a tan and I’m ready to go for the rest of this year… And not only at my job: I’ll also pick up on blogging about .NET again. While on holiday I had a strange encounter: we were looking at the window of a jewelery when one of the people who worked there came out and started a conversation.

I’m leaving for a 2-week holiday next sunday. Or actually, I’m going to a childrens camp as group leader for a week first, and after that I’m in need of a holiday ;). So then I’ll be leaving for 8 days of sun in Turkey. I’ll be back august twentysecond, but the two days after that are filled up with some in-house training, so my blog might be kinda quiet the next few weeks.

We finally made the change to Community Server here at bloggingabout.net. Because of this, some stuff will change. One of them is the appearance of all the blogs. And I’m not entirely happy with the way my blog is looking right now. I guess it takes some getting used to. Maybe I’ll switch a little the next days. If you think I should keep a certain skin (or loose it!): drop me a comment…

Last weekend I went to see the musical Hair at the Stadsschouwburg in Eindhoven. It was played by an allmost all American cast: only the male lead was a Dutch guy, if I understood correctly. (Normally the female lead was Dutch too, but that role was played by someone else last saturday.) And I have to say: it was really great! Unbelievable vocals, great play and a pretty cool way to bring all those long forgotten beautiful songs back to life (Aquariuuuuus).

Soon bloggingabout.net will switch to new (and better) blogging software. Because of this, the URL to my blog (and any other blog at bloggingabout.net) will change. In stead of bloggingabout.net/username, all blogs will become available through URLs like bloggingabout.net/blogs/username. Don’t worry if you can’t remember: the old URL will keep working for a while: it will redirect to the new one. I’ll keep you posted when the change is going to be done.

Sorry I’ve been away for a while, but there was hardly enough time between work, friends, birthdays and deadlines for me to blog… I’ll try and make up for lost time. Last sunday my girlfriend turned 25: we had a killer party! Almost 40 people visited our apartment in Eindhoven, so it was pretty crowded in out otherwise quiet home. Thanks to all of you. And then there’s been the project I’ve been working on: the first delivery is next thursday, so I’ve spent quite some time there.

They don’t want your money, they want your voice… Take ONE minute today to sign the ONE declaration and lend us your voice in the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty. Click here to visit one.org

Questa star-listed me on his blog (together with Frans Bouma!). He wrote: De blog van Gump is nog jong, maar tot nu toe voor mij in iedergeval al de meest gelezen weblog Which roughly translates to Gump’s blog is still young, but is the blog I recently read most. I’m flattered Questa: thanks! I’ll try to keep up the good work and live up to my star status. 😉

They stole my leather jacket this weekend, containing my wallet and my keys. Assholes. First thing I learned as a kid: leave other people’s stuff alone! Why is it some people simply don’t have the decency to work for the things they want? I do… Just like all of my friends. And although you might not be able to buy everything you like, it feels pretty good when you are, for instance, finally able to order the phone you’ve wanted for months.

My new phone is on the way! I ordered it yesterday, and faxed all of the necessary info today. So if all goes well, I’ll be calling you using this baby next week! This is the MDA III, provided by T-Mobile. It’s actually the QTek 9090, but T-Mobile placed their own logo on it. It has integrated wireless networking, bluetooth, and many more! I could even develop my own software for it.

Just a quick personal update: my carchoice has been approved and the car is currently on it’s way. Just a few more weeks… I sold my bike, but will be looking for another one! we had a wedding last friday, very good party! the company party was great! the bottom shelve of the cupboard in our kitchen broke: most of our muds and scales have crashed… 🙁 tonight we’re having a company yearmeeting!

It’s almost like playing Need for Speed: “Please select your car.” But this time it was real! Last saturday I had two testdrives and I selected my future car. It is going to be the Citroën C4. I ordered it today and, when all goes well, I’ll be receiving it within just a few weeks! That is if my director accepts the order. I can hardly wait ….