Web/Tech

As of September 1st the E-Controller.Eu weblog will undergo a dramatic change. After 4.5 years of service of the system Serendipity, we decided to change to a weblog system that is more standard in the blogging industry. It’s WordPress. All our other blogs are already in WordPress and it is just handier to have one system to stick to.

Unfortunately I was not able to move the entries created so far to the new system. We have decided that this weblog will stay as an archive. A link to this archive will become available in the new system, so that you have a change of looking in our history. Click here to get a preview of the new weblog system.

Tonight I have been thinking about our website a lot. The website started as a small source of information in which we shared some stories and a bit of pictures. Over the past few years it has grown considerably. My brother Geoffrey has done a wonderful job in redesigning the website for us. I am still extremely happy with all the work that he put into this. It has made updating the website very easy for me.

A lot of people don’t know, though, that E-Controller.Eu has grown beyond the front-end that most people see on a daily basis. Over the past year I have added three additional websites to the back-end of this website and even beyond that. A little tour:

E-Controller.Eu Nederlands Praten (website)
In 2009 I have started as a language coach in my voluntary work in which I teach foreigners how to speak a bit of Dutch. I plan to continue this work in the next season, which starts on September 13th. I have decided to add a website designed for this group of people in which I add information about my classes. I believe this will enhance the experience of the people attending my class. Nederlands Praten even goes beyond this website. It also has a YouTube channel on which I elaborate on Dutch in videos. This website is in Dutch.

Information Management (website)
This website is in Dutch and holds my professional résumé including a weblog that I keep on my professional career. My core business is information management and give companies real access to their data.

Restaurant Guide (website)
This is a fairly new website in English. Leann and I have decided to share our experiences of restaurants worldwide on our website in a weblog. So far we have visited a few restaurants and I have added a few reviews on them. We look forward to update this website frequently.

I invite you to look around. Feel free to comment where you feel sharing your thoughts. Right now we have over a thousand unique visitors per month. In an average month our websites are visited about 7,500 times a month. I am very proud of that and hope to extend the number of unique visitors and visits over time.

For the past six weeks or so, I have tried to work with my internet service provider to get access to their newsserver. I wanted to start to use the news server again after a few years of absence.

Now… setting up a news server in any mail or newsreader is easier than setting up an e-mail account. Yet, the newsserver of my ISP decided to tell me that my credentials are not right. It was very frustrating. The past few weeks they asked me to try a different computer, they asked me to try different software and what not. Earlier this week I called my ISP to tell them that I was fed up with them. As a last resort they asked me to address my situation to a specific e-mail address. Guess what? No response!

Today I decided to try and force a solution out of them. I talked to a few departments and finally my situation sunk in at the invoicing department after seriously threatening to reverse earlier payments. An engineer returned the call later in the evening and heard me out (he was very customer oriented, which was very refreshing for a change). He concluded that I was a long time customer and that I had been a customer at them from the very beginning (bright guy!). He asked me to try a different newsserver address, which was the address that matches the old set of e-mail addresses. BRILLIANT! I could have figured that out, if it weren’t for my ISP converting most of their other systems to their new name.

In five minutes this whole thing was solved after weeks of frustration. After the whole ordeal the guy asked me if he could do anything for me, so I explained him the frustration I experienced over the past few weeks and I asked him what he could do for me. We’re not paying for any service next month. In return I offered him the suggestion to put his solution on the website, so other could benefit from this.

On a final note he asked me whether I would appreciate it if he could contact me again next week to see if everything is working fine. Excuse me?? Did an employee of my arrogant ISP just asked that question?? I am very frustrated over the arrogance that I experienced in my ISP. My ISP better make sure to pay this guy well and keep him in the company. Customer oriented IT engineers like the guy I talked to tonight are very scarce. I am happy that my problem is solved.

Due to spam I have been forced to tighten the security in the weblog again. I don’t think anything changed visibly for our weblog readers. I would appreciate it, if you would report issues that you might come across, though, so that I am able to look into it. If you can’t report your issues in the weblog, please e-mail me at mickel[at]e-controller.eu or use the contact form.

Happy reading!

You might have heard the name Twitter before. I would describe Twitter as a mini weblog, which allows you to create entries up to 160 characters. That’s it. I use Twitter a lot while I am on my way to work or returning home. The train gives me the opportunity to go over there. Twitter makes it possible to follow people, so that’s what I do in the train. Follow interesting people and or groups on there.

I added a link to my Twitter account on the right side of the weblog links. So if you go to weblog and you scroll down, while looking at the right side of the screen, you will discover the links section. A link to my account is under these links. I twitter both in Dutch and in English depending on the subject and on my mood. Happy looking

This weekend I have worked most of the weekend. Not on the projects that keep me busy through the week, but on a private project. Geoffrey has offered us that we could take over a computer that he didn’t use anymore for a small price and I accepted. The computer was malfunctioning at first, but we got it to work, so now I am trying to test out the equipment. It’s still a very good computer, so I like it that we can use it. It allows me to go back to karaoke, as well.

This weekend I have worked on the new computer a lot, installing software and all. Besides that I had to re-format my external hard drive that holds a backup of all files that I have. I also reorganized all the files and created some backups on DVDs again. Naturally I also prepared a lesson for tomorrow’s class. It was a busy weekend, but I feel really accomplished now. I happy with the result.

Now it’s time to watch NFL football. I planned to watch College Football yesterday, but I just wasn’t into it. Oh well

At this time Leann and me are not doing a whole lot on Karaoke, so I have decided to replace the “Karaoke” link for something new. I find myself being very much interested in politics and economy. I frequently find myself wanting to write about it. This is where I created the weblog “EcoPol”, which is an abbreviation of Economy & Politics. The downturn for a lot of the E-Controller.Eu readers, though: the weblog will be in Dutch.

The layout is ready… it’s all set and done. Now it’s a matter of getting started

You may have experienced some difficulties within E-Controller.Eu yesterday and this morning. I have moved the website and all its components to a new server. The reason for doing this, is that the new server is more up-to-date technically. I need those upgrades to run new software and to experiment with new thoughts.

While transferring the website and its components my webhosting company found some trojan horses within the website. Somehow hackers managed to edit some stylesheets. Very annoying. It’s a good reason to warn you again to keep your virusscanners up-to-date at all times.

Most parts of the website and all mail is back online again.

“Poken” is a new thing in 2009. It’s a key chain that holds your contact information. If it “shakes hands” (makes contact) with another Poken the contact information of both Pokens will be exchanged. Pro: people that frequently network, will not need business cards anymore. Cons: both people networking will need to have a Poken.

This “thing” has been on the market since early 2009. This is the first time reading about it. I am not sure if this hit is as big as they say it is or will be eventually. I plan to order 300 business cards next week. Your opinion?

It seems a bit morbid to talk about Fear of Planes while it’s September 11th today. While cruising the internet this morning, I found the website Fear of Planes. This website offers tips and tricks on how to overcome the fear of flying. For those interest: pay a visit .

Our friend Andrea posted a game in her weblog, which I found interesting to forward to all of you. The objective of the game is to hit the pumpkin as far as you can! Play here! For the record, I’ll brag how far I hit this baby:

Good luck!!

I have had a disgusting experience on Marktplaats the past few days. I am seriously disheartened over how some people treat each other.

Last Saturday I received an offer for a product that I am selling on Marktplaats. I e-mailed the potential buyer, telling that I will accept their bid and the question if they would call me to make an appointment. They replied with an e-mail asking me if delivery could take place on Saturday. I replied to THAT e-mail that it was possible and asked them to call me. They sent me an e-mail again: “I will call you tonight” I thought they would want to have it today ... sigh.

Saturday evening: no phone call. So Sunday evening I sent them an e-mail again to ask them if they were still interested. Their reply: “Yes, could we come and pick up the goods Monday evening.” (remember: I asked them to call me for an appointment!!). I asked them to come at 7:30pm and they e-mailed that it was fine. Great! (*sigh*). At 7:30pm on Monday evening: no buyer! They e-mailed me (they didn’t call me, and they had my number… sigh). Their e-mail reads: “Tonight won’t work, would tomorrow work?” (Remember: I asked them to call me for an appointment).

By this time I was fed up enough and returned their e-mail with the words that I canceled the sale, because of breaking appointments and not calling me. I thought this would do the trick. It didn’t … this morning they called me (They did??? :O). They asked me if we couldn’t come to an agreement anyways. I decided (against better judgment) that I would try one more time and asked them to come over at 7:30pm. They said: “fine”. At 7pm I receive a phone call. The buyer: “I am running a little late and will need another half an hour”. WHAT??? ... okay… so half an hour… fine. They arrived at 8:30pm. No excuse or explanation given. Eventually they even didn’t buy the sale.

Don’t get me wrong, I would be perfectly able to live with that, if they would have followed up their appointments correctly in the first place. Right now this was the last straw. I didn’t say anything and let them go, but the arrogance of this person was way beyond believe not to mention how rude it was over not following up the appointments correctly OR give an explanation. It was a hard lesson in which I learned that Marktplaats sales will be followed up on MY terms.

Today I talked to the reporter. We went over the article that I had written and he interviewed me to get an idea of the person behind the article. Late in the interview a photographer showed up to take pictures of me. The article will be published either this week or next. I am really excited over this.

In other news I have started to work with more video editing software and created a new lead-in for TubeStories (again!). This intro is so much cooler than the once so far. For me this is another step into the world of interactive media. I would like to become an expert with Sony Vegas Movie Studio and with Adobe After Effects eventually, so that I could combine the best of both and may be in future find a new job in it.

We also went downtown today, as it is the weekly “Hoorn on Wednesday” market. It was a little uneventful, because most of what happened was already there a few weeks ago. The exception was the billiard tables that they placed on the old town square where they held a competition. Besides that I have taken a zillion pictures to add to my portfolio. I look forward to work with them later on. Check back in the photo section of the website regularly, as I probably will post the pictures later on.

It’s been a beautiful day today in many ways

Today I have registered the domain E-Controller.NL, so that I have both the .eu and the .nl domain. I am happy over that. I might use this .nl domain in the future. For now it just refers to the website that we have on the .eu domain.

In July 2009 more people have visited the website than ever before. I am glad to see that the website is picking up more attention. The truth is that I use my website on more places now, among them Twitter, which attracts more visitors.

I find it important that we get a lot of visitors, especially from family, friends and others that are interested in our activities. Communicating our activities, ideas and other things over this website saves us a lot of time. It’s also something that we can do when we (and you!) are ready. For example you might be working in our evening, when it would be a good time for us to call you. You won’t be home, because you work. Rather than that we create an entry, post pictures or show a video on our website, that you can see in your evening (when we are sleeping). It allows you to respond to what we post, which we’ll read after we get up again (and you are sleeping). This is where I like the website being interactive.

Check back on our website regularly as we keep it updated .