Eén van de zaken waar ik in de vriendenkring bekend voor sta.

Als ik een BBQ geef, dan is er altijd een gigantische cote a l’os bij die heel de nacht aan het weken is geweest in een zelf bedachte marinade.
Het resultaat is een stukje vlees met een ongekende zachtheid waar een bijgerechtje écht op de tweede plaats komt.
Hoe maak ik dat?

de Marinade

Beetje oosters georiënteerd…

• Oestersaus of vissaus
• ketjap (géén ketchup, maar de Japanse ketjap, maakt niet uit welke)
• citroengras
• honing
• witte wijn
• tijm
• rozemarijn
• currypoeder
• beetje witte wijn
• olijfolie

Er staan geen hoeveelheden bij, ik heb er geen gedacht van. zorg er gewoon voor dat je op het einde genoeg hebt om
Neem gelijke hoeveelheden oestersaus, ketjap en olijfolie, snij het citroengras is stukjes (groot genoeg om achteraf uit te kunnen vissen). Voeg wat honing toe, en al de rest een beetje naar gevoel en smaak.

het vlees

Koop bij uwen favoriete beenhouwer een gigantische cote a l’os, 1kg mag gerust, let wel op, als hij dikker dan 4 cm is, dan moet je al een beetje barbecue ervaring hebben om dat gevaarte nog een beetje fatsoenlijk te bakken.
Neem een diepvrieszakje dat groot genoeg is om het stuk vlees in te bewaren, en stop het erin (duh..).
Giet de marinade erover en sluit het zakje GOED af, ge wilt écht niet dat de marinade in uw ijskast begint te lopen.

Bakken!

Het plezantste:
Zorg er eerst voor dat de barbecue goed warm is, en dat de kolen mooi witgloeiend zijn.
Haal het stuk vlees uit het zakje, en giet de marinade in een kommetje, we gaan deze nog gebruiken om het vlees regelmatig in te smeren.
Pruts citroengras en kruiden die blijven plakken zijn van het vlees en leg het op de rooster.
Het is belangrijk dat je het regelmatig beweegt, en draait. bij het draaien smeer je ook wat extra marinade op het vlees.
De honing en ketjap in de marinade gaan mooi karameliseren en zorgen voor een krokant korstje terwijl het vlees langzaam gaart.
Na ongeveer 20 minuutjes, (kan ook vroeger of later, je moet dat een beetje voelen) is het klaar.
snij het vlees in fijne plakjes en serveer..

Opmerking:
als er iemand het geweldige idee krijgt om nog meer marinade op zijn patatjes te doen, ontmoedig die mens dan.. de marinade heeft heel de nacht bij rauw vlees gelegen en misschien zitten daar al dingen in die beter eens warm geworden zijn. (niet teveel over nadenken…)

Weer een beetje te impulsief geweest…

Nu dat ik in het nederlands schrijf, moet de layout van reZenerate nog naar het nederlands, en alle andere pagina’s.
‘t Begint een gewoonte te worden, mezelf met extra werk opzadelen.

op kantoor precies hetzelfde: Een upgrade naar Exchange2007; een eitje dacht ik.
De spam filter werkt niet meer (lastig), AV oplossing moest ook naar een nieuwere versie, backup werkt niet op een 64bit platform.

En dat voor iemand die een Request For Change methodologie wil invoeren. ni goe bezig Robin, ni goe Bezig. De impact analyse zou hier een early warning systeem moeten geweest zijn.
Gelukkig is de upgrade van Exchange zelf wél zonder problemen verlopen.

This is the end of my blog, in English.

I realized that I do not have the resources and time to follow up on design and lifestyle news to provide a reasonable amount of items each month.

I’m still going to blog, but I will do it in’t Nederlands.

Op die manier kan ik wat meer gaan schrijven over dingen die de Belgen, en mijzelf, aangaan. Verbouwingen, recepten, gezaag en algemenere mumbojumbo.

sorry to my English readers (all three of you ) I loved writing for You.

I’m having a serious ‘off’ day today.

I’m working on a Request for Change Implementation to help us carrying out upgrades and other actions more efficient.

The procedure is based on a workflow designed by a consultant, you know who I am talking about, and, judging by the lack of feedback, accepted by everyone involved. I agree completely with this procedure, it enables us to do a structured approach to all changes which will, hopefully result in fewer errors during, or after a change.

So I started to implement the required changes in our Helpdesk application. This proved to be a bit more difficult that initially thought, but morale was high, and I managed to get all the problems fixed.

It was time for a small demonstration for the consultant… and this is where things started to go bad.
The first thing the consultant said was “God, that’s a huge amount of extra work, don’t you feel you have created a lot of overhead?” I managed to stay calm, barely. the same guy who created the procedure now bashes it because of the overhead He created. I was too baffled to go into discussion about it; instead I (politely) left the room to get some fresh air.

On returning we agreed that we probably wanted to demo the implementation in it’s current state to the people who will also be using it. I did not like this one bit, I was pretty sure about the reaction, so why bother.

Demo day:

As expected the general reaction was rather negative, not only about the implementation, but we where also being criticized about our work in general, about the large number of incidents surrounding a change. My Argument that this procedure was designed to minimize these incidents had little effect.

So here I am, trying to finish a procedure that I just know will be the center of criticism. It is taking a long time, maybe because I’m writing a post instead of actually doing some coding?

Time will tell…

So, To wrap it up

You can successfully demotivate someone by making great promises, letting someone implement the means to make the promises reality and then saying something that starts with “God…”

A new fashion emerged in the company I work for.

In Januari the management decided that we should start adopting the agile work method.

Without going in too deep on the details of agile, this is a method that tries to optimize the efficiency and productivity in a company.
It is working. At least, that is how I experience it.
Things are more structured, we can now identify the overhead, bottlenecks and just general failures in the organisation (testing comes to mind).

But now for the funny part:

It has been decided to get help from a consultant, an efficiency evangelist as I like to call him.
And a good decision is was, there is no way to implement such a strategy without anyone motivating and steering you in the right direction.

Many of the workmethods introduced by the consultant, specifically in the department I work in (which is consulting, training, implementation and support) are things i have been lobbying for as long as i can remember. Well actually from the time we purchased a helpdesk tool to assist in organizing support.
Now, after about seven years of lobbying, and working with the crappiest access tool ever (rentacoder sucks) to handle non-support project work, I’m working closely with the consultant to implement this in our helpdesk package.

Mixed emotions:

• finally things are going to be implemented ‘my way’, actually the consultants’s way but they are compatible.

• but i can’t help feeling that my previous attempts weren’t taken seriously…

Oh well, I’m not going to lose sleep over it anymore, I’m motivated as hell to get these new methods implemented. And that can never be a bad thing.

Just to clarify, the banner at the top is only there because i think it is funny, it does not reflect my experiences with agile.

Peter Callesen creates the most beautiful pieces of art using a regular piece of paper.

This is truly Impressive stuff.  I have not much to say about this other than “go visit the site”

    Here she is, comfortably sitting in her chair, smiling at me.
Eyes wide open, unknowing what to look at first, awaiting the next bite with great anticipation.
Wide open mouth, welcoming the approaching spoon, her small arms and legs nervously moving from anticipation.
New sensations to enjoy, the taste of carrots, the structure of mashed potatoes.
Struggling to keep the moist substance in her mouth and, most of the time, succeeding in swallowing it.

    Here I am, enjoying this father/daughter moment in its purest form, astounded by the fact that the first, non milk, meal is going so well.
But most of all, enjoying the warmth that is shining off her, trough her eyes, unaware of the world we live in today and feeling truly the luckiest person alive.

While searching for other spherical subwoofers available I stumbled upon Everything but the box, a high end speaker manufacturer that specializes in alternative shapes.

their Sputnik subwoofer is an amazing piece of work. It’s looks are similar to my home made OrbSub but obviously it’s more polished.. and so it should be at a price of $2,950.

Instead of trying to create a stable stand for it, they decided to suspend it from the ceiling. Making it less suitable for home use, unless You are willing to drill holes in your ceiling.

Personally I do not like the three ‘thingies’, they distract you from the natural beauty of this sub.

If anyone cares, OrbSub was once on eBay, but around Christmas nobody seemed to care, or could it have been my $2000 pricetag?

a few comparisons

• OrbSub features a 8 inch driver that handles 150 Watts, Sputnik has a12 inch driver that apparently can handle up to 1000 Watts. I can’t find any info on the size, I can’t even find it on the EBTB site yet..
• OrbSub is a 42cm sphere, Sputnik looks slightly bigger.
• OrbSub has the cutest solid bronze spikes that make it look more like the original sputnik

via www.electronichouse.com

today rezenerate celebrates it’s first birthday. It started off as a regular blogger site that was called “diy: design it yourself”, with a default theme. That theme went trough some changes and the name changed to rezenerate.

And now, exactly one year later, it’s in an hosted environment running on Wordpress, but again with a default theme. Again, this theme will (hopefully) not be here for long.

In a impulsive move, I decided to migrate to Wordpress.

So currently you will see the default wordpress theme, but all the content that was previously entered using blogger is available here. (thank you for the import feature)

I’m working on a new theme that is more appropriate for rezenerate, but as long as this is not finished we are stuck with the current one.