I guess the picture says it all! I'll be in Stockholm, Sweden from April 27 until April 30. There's a possible rather drastic (but cool!) change for me and my girlfriend coming up. We're hoping for the best! And Robert, I'm gonna call you tomorrow!

Now you all behave and... see you after the weekend!

I just got hired (and my girlfriend as well) by the most kick-ass company I've ever seen! This means I'll be moving to Stockholm a.s.a.p. to join the team in creating an amazingly cool product. It's going to rock so hard they'll be able to hear it here in the Netherlands. More info later, when I have some more time!

Yesterday I was having a look at some retro arcade cabinets and some emulators of old home computer systems with a co-worker. It reminded me of my very first encounter with something related to computers. The event that started it all...

I must have been somewhere around eight years old. I can still remember it very clearly. I was on a holiday with my dad, his wife and my sister. We were at a camping in Hourtin, France. It was called 'Les Ourmes'. Heck, they even have a website now.

At a certain afternoon I wandered off into the cantina of the camping. There it was... a real video game cabinet. Space Invaders! I had asked my dad a couple of times already if he would let me play on the intriguing black game cabinet but he refused. Yet I was totally flabbergasted by it and I could stand behind other people playing the game for hours, gazing at the coolness going on on the screen. This had to be the most awesome thing I'd ever seen in my short life. I had seen the 'Game & Watch' devices which were on display in many stores at that time. But this was different. An arcade cabinet. The real deal!

I thought I'd throw in a small personal update so that you all know I'm not dead or anything. These are extremely busy days for me. I'm working for Eduvision on a project I can't say much about yet and teaching a Linux sysadmin course for them. Besides Eduvision I'm involved in two great design projects. ZoeTown (current page isn't my design b.t.w.) is going to be a really cool home video contest site. I'm finishing the design and XHTML implementation while my fine ex-collegues from Pareto are working hard to get the backend part of it going. Once it's live you'll read all about it here. Secondly I'm working on a total redesign of Waterkant.Net, the largest community site for Suriname in the Netherlands. This project not only involves design but also the actual implementation in WordPress. Then there's of course the Dutch Directions network. Still in it's infancy but... going strong! Currently we're digging through the applications we received in the first submission round. A lot of great blogs will be joining us in the future!

Finally there's something big going on in my life which I'll 'code name' as 'The Stockholm connection'. I'm not going to say much about it yet except for the fact that I'll be in Stockholm from April 27 - April 30. Of course I'm going to say hi to Robert!

In the meanwhile, stay tuned. A lot of exciting stuff is coming up but... some patience will be required!

Long-time visitors will smile and recognize this. Newer visitors won't. This post will get one or more followups but for now I just wanted to present an open question. Imagine the above watch wouldn't be an engineered fake by yours truly. Imagine it would be readily available at your local store. Would you consider buying this watch instead of a normal one? Imagine the watch would be available with many different indicator colors including colors you really like. Would you want one?