Bart's thoughts

Well, as a new member of the Avernas Golf Club I wasn’t sure what to expect from the gala-evening that is organised every year by the Avernas Golf Club. I heard a lot of great things and we were able to get rid of the kids (maybe that’s not the best way to say it, let’s just say that Kristan and Natalia were very happy to stay with their cousins that night). Anyhow, the evening started quite calm and relaxed with Valérie making me drop my glass of champagne on the floor and with the casual chit-chat with the members. Alex was running around taking care of the guests and Chantal was keeping an eye out to see if everything was running smoothly. Pierre and Toma were “very” busy in the kitchen preparing the buffet. Anyhow, we had a great evening with Tanguy, Jean-Pierre, Daniel and all the other people we are getting to know now. Big thumbs up to Pierre and Toma because they did an AMAZING job in the kitchen. Funfact of the evening : Valérie won a very nice putter with the sweepstake .

Below you can see the pictures of the evening :

in short : a very niiiice evening

Well, I have been into Mobile since a while and I made a small presentation about Mobile Search Engine Optimization. Normally I’m not really into the hype and I firmly believe that if your site is well balanced and has the right content, SEO will follow (meaning that you will end up high in Google). For mobile I’m not so sure because the big search firms are still working on finding the best way to index mobile pages. The biggest problem is : how can a crawler know that a page is optimized for a mobile device, and if so : which one (iphone, HTC, Nokia, etc…). In this particular case it is best to help the searchbot a bit by respecting the guidelines that you can find in my presentation. Nothing special you know, just some best practices. Funny thing with mobile is that I find myself back in 1997 when the browser and OS war was still raging and where coding standards were still (or almost) non existent. A bit the same now with mobile but worse… iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Android, RIM, Symbian to name just a few of the OS and this combined with Safari, IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, RIM-browser and so on. Let’s hope that we get some standardization there because now it’s a living hell to develop a generic Mobile site. Ow, here is my presentation :

Some cool pics from my vacation with my nephew’s Family (Kris, Mieke, Ellen and Wim) and the Moonen family (Bart, Inge, Aster and Felien).

Sun, Snow and Fun, what do you want more?

Sometimes life surprises you with a fun fact you didn’t expect…How about a toilet with 60° C water in the closet. We just encountered it in our hotel in Grenoble. Due to a distracted plumber the hot water tap had been connected to the toilet. The result is that we have steaming water in the toilet…funny but don’t flush the toilet when you are still on it (especially not when you are  a man ).

Well, Valérie (my wife) and me just did one of the nicest joggings we have ever done. We participated in the jogging Tihange 2010 and it was a blast. Mostly we are running in the bigger joggings (the Carefour runningtour for example) where you have in general more than 1000 participants so we were a bit reluctant to go to one of the smaller happenings in our region. But what a surprise : super organisation, subscription fee only 3 € and all the things we got…a T-shirt, snacks, drinks and lots of sponsored stuff. The jogging itself was beautiful with runs through the woods, especially opened private parks and gardens and off course the very nice region of Huy. Not very easy though and we were, let’s say, closing the ranks . You can see the level difference on the image below  :

Jogging Tihange 2010

For the jogging fans amongst you : a really nice jogging that will perfectly train for a 10 miles or the 20 km at Brussels. And the fun fact of the day : 700 meters before the arrival all joggers were offered a “Peket”. If you don’t know what that is : Google it…

Trip to Durbuy in May 2007

Well, I’m almost there…almost 50.000 km done on my Triumph Sprint ST. I bought this bike 3 years ago (February 2007) and it has never let me down since then. I’m a regular driver who uses his bike mainly (almost exclusively) for professional means. During the weekend I don’t have a lot of opportunities to go drive in the beautiful region of Huy and the Ardennes that are not so far from where I live. Just to tell you that I’m not the classic weekend warrior who is polishing his bike from morning till noon and then goes for long rides through senic landscapes (I wished).

I have chosen the Triumph Sprint ST for several reasons and I would like to share them with you so that it might help if you ever have to make a choice for a bike that will at the same time be used for professional home-work traffic but that can also be used for good leisure trips. My main criteria at the time where :

• Budget
• Test-Drive
• Reliability

continue reading…

When firms launch new products they test them quite extensively before releasing them. For interfaces (such as a website, a Smartphone or any other piece of junk that has an interface) one of the things that is tested is the usability of it all. How easy is it for the user to find out what he has to do to reach his goal (and preferably without reading the 350 page manual). The methodologies on this subject are vast and there are many companies who have made it their core business. But this is not what I want to talk about. This week my grandparents (77 and 79 years old) were asked by a big bank to do usability tests on one of their new applications. That’s usability testing!! If they can understand the interface, everybody can! I’m quite proud to see that my grannies are still an active economic factor in our society and I’m as much thrilled as them to see them working on this project. I’m just curious to see how it will go, every time it’s the daylight saving time switch my granddad asks me to modify the hour on his digital watch (it has only two buttons)… to be continued…

I’m one of these guys who risks his life every morning by driving from Liège to Brussels…on a bike. And last week it was really a whole adventure. Rain, traffic jams, wind, cold and every other unpleasantry you can think of. My boots were so soaked that I had to put them on the central heating when I arrived at my clients office. I was sitting with only my socks on at the meeting table. Luckily for me I have a very understanding client who prefers me being on time and soaked than being too late but dry. I therefore would like to thank all my clients who bring up the necessary understanding when I arrive (on time) looking like a soaked rat who just avoided a horrible drowning death in the sewers. And also many thanks for the warm coffee that is always spontaneously offered.