Coen’s blog

So this is a nice one. Just back from my holidays and a short week before starting my new job the CEO of the company calls me to tell me that I’m not needed anymore (anymore? I didn’t even work a single second, but whatever). That’s kind of a bummer but hey, I made a backup plan and that’s what I’m going to execute right now.

And actually, I’m very excited about it. The thing is, next September I’m going to give the master Biomedical Image Sciences a try. Maybe as soon as next week, I’ll have an appointment with the programme coordinator and see how I can get started.

That also means that I’ve to look out for an additional job to earn myself some money to pay for the tuition fees so if any of you have any idea’s, you’re welcome

3 Comments »

Well, I’ve been quiet for some time now and today I decided that it was time to write about something else than programming, for a change. For the last 3.5 weeks I’ve been traveling through Thailand and I thought it would be nice if I shared my experience a little with y’all so there we go:

Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok

Panorama from Vertigo, Bangkok

Waterfall at Erawan National Park

Muay Thai matches in Chang Mai

Giant Panda in Chang Mai Zoo

Wat Mahathat, Chang Mai

Idyllic view from our guesthouse in Koh Pangan

And that’s it. Completely for free for you to get jealous about.

No Comments »

And there it is: the year 2009.
Thing is, I don’t really have a clue as to how to write this particular post, but there are a few things that I want to mention because I’m really really really excited about them
First of, I’m going to graduate this year, starting February 2nd. I plan to do that at Sogyo, and I’ve got a very cool assignment: I am going to do research after the available tools of code generation and DSL, and build proof of concept code in case the already available tools don’t suffice. Also, I think I will get my first Java certificate (SCJP).

Although these things all have a high nerd factor, I’ve a plan that can top that. In the summer holidays, I’ve decided to go to Hacking At Random, which will be in The Netherlands this year. I think that my friends and classmates (who also will be there) and I will have a *lot* of fun. As a matter of fact, I promise to show you some pictures afterwards.

While I’m thinking about it, my learning-by-cheating idea didn’t go as well as I thought: I didn’t finish that little project (but alas, that’s one of many). What did come out of it is Sentry. The Sentry core is actually nothing more than a library loader, but is has some nice features. Each plug-in (or library) can provide a number of hookpoints, where other plug-in commands can hook onto. Nice thing about this is that you can create a completely event-driven application, and anyone is free to create their own plug-ins. At this moment, I’m using it to create an IRC bot that is kind of able to control what’s happening in a channel and also to give my c++ knowledge a boost If you’re interested: you can take a quick look at my websvn subdomain, the repository is sentry_cpp, and it’s also possible to svn co it from the svn subdomain.

That’s all for now, happy 2009 y’all!

No Comments »

A long time ago, when I still was in high school, I sometimes tried to cheat my way out of some classes (like French, for instance). Of course, after a while, I got reasonably good at it, and that’s basically how I finished the course. I became more and more bold in other courses too, and after a while I got caught ( that was inevitable, of course).

Some time after I finished the part of high school we call ‘brugklas’, I came across a teacher who, to my surprise, encouraged using cheating notes. As I soon would realise, the man ment for us to create cheating notes before the exam, and not use them during one. That way, he said, you learn to summarize the things you need to study for that exam, and you’ll remember it, too.

The man was right. So, now that’s all behind me, I can use this story to do some cheating, while pretending to learn from it as well The cheating is about a trivia channel on irc. I’m writing a bot in Java that can parse irssi logfiles, and is also able to learn from the questions the trivia bot asks. The things I’m hoping to learn from this: How to simulate a human being that answers the questions (that means, among other things: do not answer every question correctly, but also that is makes some sense), and what is the nicest, most efficient way to learn questions; how do I determine the correct way to answer, etc.

So: $learning_by_cheating++

2 Comments »

After we spent out first holiday-week in Portugal, we decided to spend the second week in Eersel, The Netherlands. I must tell you, it’s a relief being here. And not just for the quiet environment (there’s lots of that over here), but also in case you forget to bring something, because you can go back and grab it. Maybe, if you already know me, you know that I tend to forget stuff. So to keep the legend going, I also forgot something this time (I don’t know exactly what it was again, but it had something to do with sleeping at a decent temperature).

You guys have no idea how lucky I was this time, because my girlfriend also brought stuff to sleep nice and warm, so I didn’t have to go back The only thing I have to do next time is prepare (as in creating a list of things that I have to bring, and actually take them with me).

That’s all for now folks, see you next time!

2 Comments »