Posts in ‘General’

Time to relax + reading

So, since Monday, school is over for this year. I had my last exam (analogue electronics), and I think it went pretty well, my results will be good enough.

This means that it’s time to relax a bit, which I’m glad about. Tomorrow, I’m heading to England, to see Brittany again after 4 months apart. I’m pretty pumped about that. Packing is mainly done, I’m ready to leave tomorrow. Up there we’ll probably being playing ITG and DDR often, as Britt has her own machine. I’m looking forward to that too, as these dance games are next to exhausting also a lot of fun.

Britt will be following up on the world cup, which might just give me an opportunity to do some coding, as I’m frankly not interested in football, that’s not to say I find it boring and over the top (but let’s not go on about that).

Tomorrow I’ll be spending quite some time on trains, so I had to find something to do in that time. Part of the time I can still use Internet on my mobile phone, but the bigger part will be Internet-less. I’ve decided that I won’t be spending that time on my laptop, instead, I’ll be boring and read a book. Recently, upon reading a friend’s blog, I realized that my English vocabulary really isn’t all that. From chatting and general Internet communication you don’t get the more ‘advanced’ vocabulary down.

The best solution I saw was to get my hands on some English literature, so I let Derek, of whom I know reads/has read a lot recommend me a book. He recommended me Robert Heinlein’s “Have Space Suit- Will Travel”, which is a science fiction story. Apparently it is his favourite book, so I decided to just get me the book with ebay. I got it for about €6, for that matter.

So here’s hoping I can enjoy the book, and improve my vocabulary a bit. I’m off to have a great 9 days, see you guys later!

Work rambling

In Belgium, and probably in multiple other countries too, there’s some government service where you’re eligible to receive money when you’ve been unemployed for a certain amount of time. Since I technically finished day school little under a year ago, and only did a month-long summer vacation job, I apparently am eligible for this. Obviously though, since it’s the government providing money to citizens, there’s a whole load of paperwork connected to it, to eliminate the chance they’d give one eurocent too much.

To be honest, I don’t care much about money. All I wish for is to live comfortably, and to be able to do what I like to do. Unfortunately that’s not how society works—everything costs money, and you need this money to survive; there’s no other way, unless you decide to walk the criminal road, which I’m frankly not planning to do.

I wish I could just continue working on The Audio Portal. It’s my passion, and I like to invest my time in it. Instead, I’ll have to push most of my time aside and find a paying job, because soon, my mother will no longer receive any so-called “child-money” for me anymore, as I’m no longer in day school. I find this terribly annoying, but I guess I’ll have to live with that fact.

So now I’m dealing with a whole lot of paperwork; I need to make sure I’m registered here, there, there, and make sure I fill in this information here, bring that document to that office, get this document filled in over there to then bring it here, and so forth. I find this very tiring, running around with documents just so I’d get a bit of money for my mother, to sustain our living.

Here’s hoping I can get hired for the job as web developer I applied for. It’s the first job I found that I’d actually love to do, which I also qualify for (at least that’s what I think). I really don’t feel like doing a boring, non-challenging job as a cashier somewhere… that feels like I’d be wasting my time, just to get some money.

Instead, I wish to get that job, which can challenge my skills every single day, and from which I can learn new, useful things every day too. Added to that, I wouldn’t have to deal with these government offices as much anymore, and just get paid for something I like to do instead. Earning the bread on the table looks much more attractive than being given the bread because I can’t find a job.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Sociability / Social ability

I have a problem. That problem is that I’m not sociable at all. One problem usually causes other problems. In my case, not being sociable has caused me to spend most of my time in front of my computer, alone in my room up here. Which is obviously not good for one’s physical and mental health, and only causes the problem to get worse.

The interesting part is that I am very sociable with people online. I’ve met well over 60 people online which I still talk to every now and then, some of them daily, all over the course of 2 and a half years. When it comes to getting to know new people in real life though, it’s a bit tougher for me. I feel uncomfortable whenever I get in a situation where I have to talk to a stranger. This causes me to avoid social contact with them as much as possible, as I feel far more comfortable in my own little world of thoughts.

When you see me on a train heading for evening school, you’ll notice I have earphones in, and I’m mostly using my my mobile phone. What I’m doing on my phone? Chatting with people online. This can be the people in the chatroom of TAP, or just people on MSN. In fact, I get really annoyed when I don’t have network coverage on the train, because that means I’m alone. It’s kind of ironic that I can’t stand being alone when I have nothing to do, yet I don’t talk to people (in real life). I basically take my Internet social circle with me everywhere I go.

Anyway, I think I’m the most comfortable with getting to know people in real life by first having relatively short moments together, preferably with someone I already knew around. I’ll be honest: at first I didn’t feel very comfortable with my classmate and electronics teacher in evening school, simply because I didn’t know them. By now, the end of the year, they’ve become good friends, and we have inside jokes and everything. At the very start, I was uncomfortable with them, mostly because I don’t know how to behave myself with people I don’t know. I seem to be petrified to get into awkward situations.

Needless to say, I won’t be the one that starts a conversation with a stranger, unless it really is required for something. I do want to get over this. I’ve been told by people that I’m a friendly guy, but I’m pretty sure that’s only from people that have known me for a while. I may be friendly, but I don’t think many people who only know me in real life know what’s really spinning in my head. I’m a closed box, because I’m scared to be judged about things. I wish I could just stand up and not care about judgments, and just be who I am, talk about it to people without constantly fearing awkwardness. I’ve realized that being afraid of awkward moments just attracts said moments. This knowledge hasn’t solved that problem in its entirety though.

I want to get over this, I want to actually become sociable and dare to talk about myself, talk about things I actually care about more openly, while actually stating my opinion. I can’t get more sociable by just being forced to spend a long period of time with people I don’t know; I want to find another way to slowly build myself to not be a ‘wuss’ and just shamelessly talk to people. Without the need for a bit of alcohol.

Instant messaging rants

Many people use Windows live messenger (or MSN if you still prefer that name), and so do I. There are a couple of things that bug me about the way some people use it though. I guess they actually apply to most IM services, but my experience is solely with WLM.

Statuses

I always use the status feature what it is meant for—to indicate my status. When I’m available to talk to, I’ll have my status at… you guessed it—available.
When I’m busy with something, I’ll have it at busy. This means you can still talk to me, but you shouldn’t really expect a quick response from me, or just me pursuing active conversation, since, as my status implies, I’m busy with things.

When I set my status to away (and this is the one that many people don’t seem to grasp) it means I AM NOT THERE. When I am away, you shouldn’t talk to me if you expect a response soon. Sure, you can leave me a message for when I get back, so I can get back to you, when I’m actually there.

I’ve had it more often than I would deem normal that I come back to my computer to see a bunch of messages telling me to respond. I’m NOT THERE, so I don’t see you’re talking to me so I CAN’T RESPOND. It’s not too hard to understand. Sure, some people you know set themselves to ‘away’ even when they’re there—but does that mean that everyone does that? Didn’t it get to you, that when someone that is at ‘away’, and doesn’t respond, might in fact be, you know, away?

‘Instant’

Sometimes, when someone is set to ‘available’, and I try to talk to them, it takes a couple of minutes for them to respond. This is completely acceptable, the person might be busy chatting to others. What frustrates me though, is that sometimes, people respond, then I talk back, and then it takes another 10 minutes or so for the next response—and so on. If you’re busy, use that handy status feature to indicate so. It’s really frustrating if you try to have a conversation with someone who only replies every 10 minutes, especially if their responses indicate interest in having the conversation.

During conversations like these, I sometimes get the feeling that using e-mail would be more efficient.

Feel free to add your own rants about instant messaging.

Introduction

Hello there, my name is Michaël, or just Mich if you prefer that (I do).

I actually had a blog before, but I set my standards too high, so eventually I didn’t have anything to write about. That and the fact wordpress somehow failed while updating and I couldn’t be bothered to fix it.

The plan is that on here, I write about things I occupy myself with. These can be posts about programming, music, or even philosophical topics.

I am currently working on a rather big website project, which I plan to release into the public in little over a month; this blog may eventually discuss subjects regarding said site too, as it is becoming a rather big part of my life.

Either way, there’s an ‘About’ page on here too, which I may or may not update in the future.

I’d also like to mention that I chose this wordpress theme because it suits the overall style of the rest of my website. I tweaked around a bit in the style file, added a header etc… I think I like the outcome of it. The picture in the header is one I took when I went wandering yesterday.