Ok, ok, I promise to go back to the tech blogging in my next posting but this news item has made me so angry I just had to post a rant about it. Remember a while ago how I posted I'd LOVE to get out of the egoist, selfish Western world to go and live in a country where people still have a heart? Here comes a fine example of how rotten our society has become. Meet Taida, an intelligent young woman from Kosovo who is being treated like a criminal by our great Dutch government.

What Taida's classmates wrote

Let me just translate what her classmates wrote on this site.

Taida is our classmate, 18 years old, from Kosovo. She's living in the Netherlands since 1999 as a refugee. Together with her parents and her two younger sisters she lived in Wageningen where she went to school. When she was 13 she got assigned to an elementary school. At her own initiative, she contacted people who placed her in a special class. In this special class she learned Dutch in very short time which is why she could go to highschool much sooner. She turned out to be highly intelligent and got higher grades than anybody else.

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As some of you may know I've got a mild obsession when it comes to Technorati and becoming a top 1000 blogger. Every once in a while I check my ranking to find it's slowly but surely improving. A while ago I realized I've never really looked into which blogs are actually in Technorati's top 100. I never bothered with the top 100 because I believe becoming a top 100 Technorati blogger is simply not going to happen with the narrow topical scope I have with this particular weblog. Nevertheless, I checked out what's 'hot' according to Technorati which is how I found Xiaxue.

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In an interesting article Amy Gahran recently published her '10 Reasons Why Blogs Are an Awkward Conversation Tool'. While she brings up some valid arguments I don't agree with all of her 10 reasons. Therefore I figured it would be nice to write a response to each of her ten reasons similar to what I did before with my item called Me versus Jakob Nielsen's weblog design mistakes. Let's take a look at what Amy has to say!

1. THEY'RE NOT INTUITIVE: Well, not to everyone, especially to non-geeks (and that's most of the world, folks.) Face it: blogs have serious usability issues.Amy Gahran

I strongly disagree with this one. Just like with any other type of website you'll find blogs that aren't intuitive as well as blogs that are. When surfing the web you'll find plenty of blogs that are well laid out and easy to use and navigate. You will also find plenty of non-blog websites with horrible interfaces which make it almost impossible to find the information you're looking for. In short: This isn't anything related to blogs in particular. It relates to a proportion of all websites on the internet.

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As you may have noticed this site doesn't have any 'valid xhtml' vanity buttons. My previous design used to have these but I decided to rip them out. I've grown to believe there are more important issues to worry about than whether every page on this website is 100% valid xhtml. Allow me to explain!

When you look at the code of this website you'll see that I'm perfectly capable of creating a valid xhtml website with no table to be seen anywhere in the code. In fact at the moment I'm writing this, the site is basically valid except for one thing: some character issues. It's those character issues that drive me nuts lately and I decided to stop bothering with those. In fact most of these issues are generated by my CMS and I really don't see any use in patching this and keeping sure no 'problem' like that will ever occur. Things like this only become 'problems' if we call them that.

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Welcome to the brand new design for 'The Net is Dead'. Over the past three weeks I've been spending my travel time as well as many evenings and time in the weekend on creating a brand new look for my weblog. It's been a great experience to work on this new template and I've learned a lot of new techniques in the process. I can now officially express my deep love for Prototype.js. Without this awesome piece of javascript wizardry this new template really wouldn't have been possible. This posting marks the beginning of a new and exciting period for me as a developer & designer. I've got a lot of exciting things planned for the future about which I'll write more in due time. Let's first celebrate this new design! (continue reading...)

It's not a common thing to do for me to show new designs in advance. However this time I'm going to make an exception. As some of you may know I am hoping to get nominated for a Dutch Bloggie for Best Design. You may like the current design but it has it's problems and limitations which is why I'm working on a new one. It's almost done in fact. I'm ironing out the last issues and I expect to throw it online within a week. Since there's only one week to go when it comes to getting nominated and because I feel it would be fair to show in advance what you'd actually be voting for I'm throwing in a sneak preview.

You can click the images to get a full size impression!

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It's been slightly quiet on this site lately but that doesn't quite mean I'm not doing anything or not paying attention. A lot is going on lately which is a great thing. First of all there's the new 9rules Web 2.0 community of which I've become the Community leader. This means I'll post updates on what's going on in the Web 2.0 community here as well as organizing other exciting activities within the community in the future. The new 9rules Communities kick serious ass so you're all invited to check out the treasures that are hidden within: all excellent weblogs.

Then there's Dutch Directions. A top secret new enterprise I'm currently preparing with my partners in crime Simon and Max. Hopefully it's going to be the next big thing in the Netherlands real soon now. More details on what the hell this means will follow later.

In the meanwhile I'm also working on a total redesign for 'The Net is Dead'. The current design has been decorating my site for over 10 months already which is an all time personal record. As much as I still like the current look of this site I believe change is good. I'm working on a design with less 'fuss' and more focus on what this site is really about: the content. I'm also trying to achieve full separation of content, markup and behavioral elements. No more onclick="foo" ma'm! Hopefully I'll be able to present you all with a brand new look in a week or two. No promises though because I'm trying not to rush it for a change. Like they love to say over at ID software: It will be released 'when it's done' [tm].

There's even more going on but I'll address those things when I feel it's the right time to do so. For now I'll leave you with the following egg. God knows what's going to come out of it or if I'll be sorry real soon now but nevertheless here it is: a stupid colored egg. How's that for an exciting surprise eh?

As most of you will know I'm Dutch. I'm Dutch and I'm a blogger. The Netherlands has over 16 million inhabitants of which a very high percentage has access to the internet. This means there's also an enormous amount of Dutch weblogs. Many of these weblogs are written in Dutch. So why am I blogging in English, one may wonder? (continue reading...)

I'm still recovering from yesterday's party and still a bit hazy in the head from the champagne I just had but still I'd like to wish you all an excellent and happy 2006. May all your dreams and wishes come true. I'm sure as hell going to work on accomplishing that!