You can view my other pictures taken that day here.

The first theme was ‘letters’. Of course everybody ran to the city library. We did too, not to take pictures but it was on our way to the Boekentoren, a building that stores an amazing archive of letters, books and other artifacts. Unfortunately we couldn’t access the Boekentoren, so we had to take some pictures in the environment. At the ground floor, there was an archive publicly available which contained quotes of some people, sorted by category. We were lucky, because a category ‘letters’ existed.

The second theme was ’stone’. This picture was taken in Ghent at ‘de Poel’. I found this theme a little bit too abstract and difficult to do. The pictures taken for this theme were very widely interpreted (which is a good thing). The actual elected picture for this theme was not that good, in my opinion. Except for the picture you can see here, I also had another nice idea for this theme. We bought scissors in Hema in Ghent and tried to make a composition of ’stone’, ‘leaf’, ’scissors’, as in the game . Stone was the ‘Gravensteen’ on the background, a bush on the foreground and the scissors for cutting a leaf of the bush.

The third theme was ‘tasty’. This was a nice one. It was the last theme, around 17h-18h, so everybody had to eat something. Of course there were plenty of pictures of food, ice creams, and so on. We went to the Wok A Way and asked the cook to put some rice on a dish and place it on the conveyor belt. Maybe we had to do more tricks with the belt and a clear shot of the food. It was very dark and I didn’t have my tripod with me.

The pictures of Jeroen and me were not selected. Some of the pictures that actually won, weren’t that good in my opinion. Of course it’s always a very subjective choice..

The organization of the marathon day was very good! The reception at the evening for the picture election was well organized, good wine and food. Download points during that day weren’t too crowded. No critics for Fnac

Goosh, the Google shell .. basically the same functionality as searching via the well known google web interface, but with the layout of a pseudo Unix-styled shell.

The first thing I typed in this shell was: lucky goosh,
which means “I’m feeling lucky and bring me to the first result of goosh”.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?defid=738117&term=goosh

Greets from.. Ghent

Sometimes I wonder how certain objects and monuments have been transported their way to where they are now. Some of them are composed ad hoc, some of them get transported from the factory.

This thought also crossed my mind while driving to Ghent and passing a Boeing 707. This plane has been there about 10 years and it’s the first time I noticed it, although I lived in this neighborhood for 25 years now.

It appears a build permit is needed for having this plane their. As it doesn’t have one, it should be removed withing one year (I think mid-2008). It has been used until now for educational purposes. If you want to see this plane for yourself, head for the Kwatrechtsteenweg in Wetteren.

• Datamatrix
• QR Barcode

The Nokia N95 tries to scan and decode the encrypted image. You can encrypt up to 2,335 alpha-numeric characters with Datamatrix and 4,296 alpha-numeric characters with the QR Barcode matrix code. Unfortunately the Nokia N95 only supports messages with maximum 90 alpha-numeric characters.

Nokia 95 recognizes the decoded content as URIs, to which you can surf; numbers, to which you can call, or just plain text.

Click here to find an open source tool, written in C, which will output these data matrices in various formats.

In the ‘Head Shop/Shop Head’ exhibition he tries to express an unambiguous image of the ‘Western way of life’. This is brought by sexual, dirty, ketchup-decorated short-films and dolls. This exhibition shows several short-movies on the walls and settings where these films were recorded in the halls of the museum. On the first floor you will see some additional constructions of murder scenes, abstract tokens, drawings and dolls.

In my humble opinion it’s sometimes hard to discover the actual meaning of these abstract creatures and films.
For instance, on the first floor you will see his famous ‘Dead H’, a sculpture made of galvanized steel in the shape of the letter “H”(uman). This represents a man with his two arms and two legs. You can’t see the part that joins the two stems (what should be the stomach of the human being). It represents the inner of people which can’t be seen from outside

You don’t have to be modern art lover to get overwhelmed by this. Therefore I would advise all people to visit the Paul McCarthy’s exhibition in the S.M.A.K. museum in Ghent.

It was great! I’ve been there for four days. Here are some groups I’ve heared:

Day 1

1. Bjork: not my style, but the performance was something special. A group of old fashion Chinese people were standing on the stage and playing rare instruments.
2. Muse: Yeah! Excellent mix of piano, guitar and drums..

Day 2

1. Joan as Police Woman: Never heard of her, but I was positively surprised. The mood of her music was soft and sweet, Norah-Jones stylish (in my opinion).
2. Kaiser Chiefs: Ruby Ruby Ruby.. and some other songs I liked the music but not the singer. Maybe he takes his group name too literal..
3. Bloc Party: What a successful combination: Negro singer and a white music style. His voice is something you’ve never heard before, maybe because I’ve never heard a black man singing pop (okay, except for Lionel Richie). This is the first group in this list I’m definitely buying a CD from.
4. Arctic Monkeys: Not my thing. First of all, they looked stoned on the stage and this wasn’t fit for the main stage. They’ve had one hit (which I like) and the rest is just some ordinal rock in my opinion. They also didn’t have a great performance, I even wouldn’t notice it if they were play backing.
5. Gabriel Rios: His last CD ‘Angelheads’ is something what he said to be ‘his own style without any external influence’. I like this style better then his older songs. This is also someone I’ll buy a CD from (or borrow it from my girlfriend, who bought that CD yesterday)

Day 3

1. Snow Patrol: Not really hard rock at all, but still great music. I know this group already before it had it first big hit, so I don’t have much to say, they did great.
2. Peter Gabriel: I know him from songs like ‘Salisbury Hill’ and ‘In your eyes’. He’s one of the milestones in music history so I really wanted to see him.
3. Keane: I kissed a boy, kissed a boy. I told him he was beautiful.. (or at least something like that ). I like his music, it’s something everyone could like and not get bored after hearing it twice.
4. The Chemical Brothers: I’ve expected more from them. They played their two big hits ‘Galvanize’ and ‘Hey Boy, Hey Girl’ in the first five minutes of their set and that was it, no more climaxes, just trying to climb the wall which they didn’t dare to jump off..

Day 4

1. The Kooks: Happy music. Don’t expect it to be sophisticated, but amusing
2. Interpol: Classic one, but they are great.
3. Incubus: Normally not my style, but their bis songs were great (‘Are you in’, …).
4. Metallica: Cool performance
5. Faithless: My top group for this day. I don’t know how they do it, but the quality of the sound was the best I’ve heard on this Werchter edition. Very pure. I’ve say him more then four times now, I think it’s time for a new CD