Category: Fun

Softskills obtained by gaming

Posted on by kvaes

Games are not good. Or at least that’s what many people would have you believe. In English idiom, the exhortation to “stop playing games” implies manipulation, prevarication, even procrastination.

Yet many games teach us very good softskills. Some form of conversation is always necessary for a game to progress. Many games take social interaction to new heights by placing a premium on negotiation. In Monopoly, deals to waive interest, exchange property and form strategic alliances are common in multiplayer games.

For example : No player can win – or even hope to survive – without engaging with others and learning to smell false promises in military games. Its central attraction lies in the negotiations, alliances, betrayals, poker faces and backstabbing that follow.

Read more? Collect life lessons as you pass go!

MythTV is dead, long live Dreambox!

Posted on by kvaes

This week I was fed up with the recurring issues I have with my MythTV setup. We got used to the long channel changes and accepted that the remote control (actually LircD) acted up on a frequent basis. Yet after having had a lot of issues with my ATI card, I switched to nvidia. This week I did an upgrade to get Lirc more stable, which caused my video to lag… I suppose that some MythTV internal changed as updating/downgrading my nvidia drivers didn’t work.

As the WAF was completely ruined and each “downtime” caused my lifetime to shorten with a few years, I decided to go with my initial hunch to buy a dreambox. Two days later the box arrived and after a bit of googling I flashed the device with the PLI image and I was AMAZED!!! I repeat myself: AMAZED!!!

  • Fast channel changes… WOW
  • Very good remote control… WOW
  • Easy plugin/update system… WOW
  • TV & Radio channesl seperated… NICE
  • Low Power Usage… YEAH
  • And so SMALL!!! The remote is about the same size as the device.

It’s a linux device underneath the hood, so I can simply manage connectivity to other devices. So it instantly became a small nas server for my other media devices too… Which brings me to another point; what will I do with my old MythTV hardware? 😉

LogiTouch

Posted on by kvaes

About a month ago I started my own webdesign agency. So after almost 2 years of kvaes.be I’ve took the step towards entrepreneurship!

We focus on the “local” market, providing quality websites at an affordable price. It’s not “yet another high priced” bureau… The OpenSource world provides the means which enables us to provide a very interesting price.

Our Two Week Cycladic Dream

Posted on by kvaes

I’m back after two weeks of Island Hopping in the Greek cyclades. We first arrived at Mykonos where we were greeted by very unfriendly prices (read: 6€ for a beer, 14€ for a very simple spaghetti, etc). Yet the island hasn’t goet much to offer, despite that they out themselves as an exclusive Island. They have some big party beaches that can be compared to Ibiza, but that doesn’t justify the negative price/quality ratio. The second island was Paros; a very small & nice island. We toured the whole Island in one day with a scooter! Next up was Naxos… seemly bigger than Paros (about 3 to 4 times). Cruising this island with a scooter proved to be harder due to the hills. Yet it was worthwhile as the island has a lot of nice panorama’s and several different vegetations. We closed our tour with Santorini. It’s essentially what remains of an enormous volcanic explosion, destroying the earliest settlements on what was formerly a single island, and leading to the creation of the current geological caldera. This provides some spectacular physical beauty.

In short

  • Island hopping in Greece is great!
  • Rent a scooter on each island to discover it at your own pace.
  • Do a little research upfront on the island (to know which things to check out or avoid?) 😉