John Kleijn - Personal

Back from Calgary

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:44:24 +0100

Last week I was in Calgary (Canada) for a few days to meet some of the people I have been doing business with remotely for a few years now. Despite my throat infection and horrible cough, I had a great time.

Many thanks to Mark Lall and his wife, Christopher Staley and David Nagy

Where's all the good HipHop?

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:21:12 +0100

Working late, yet again, I often have a news/current events program running on one of my 3 monitors. Today I had to listen to some elitist guys praise the last Kanye West album as "one of the best Hip Hop albums ever made".

Please. Kanye West is of Puff Daddy/Diddy whatever caliber: he sucks. I'd even go as far as saying that kind of stuff is not even Hip Hop.

A few months ago (better late than never) though I discovered a new combination that is stepping up to represent the real hardcore Hip Hop, Hip Hop as it's meant to be: La Coka Nostra. From the Soul Assassins network, you can expect little less than excellence. And La Coka delivers.

La Coka, of course, isn't perfect. It's lyricists consist of Slaine, Ill Bill and Everlast. Slaine's an excellent lyricist, though he seems a bit off sometimes. Everlast at times seems out of time: the style that suited him well in the House of Pain seems out of place at times. But other times he shows the type of skill that validate his position as an all time classic. And then there's Ill Bill. Well, I have no comment on Ill Bill, that guy is just plain awesome. In the above clip you'll also see B-Real, Cypress Hill front man and Soul Assassins catalyst, it would be ridiculous to review his skills.

On a serious note:

Someone on that program explicitly praised the accessibility of Kanye West's work. That's not the right reason to praise an album. I don't like classical music, if I praise someone for making classical more accessible all I'm really saying is "this didn't suck as much". Or is Beethoven praised for the accessibility of classical music that his familiar tunes provide?

Where's all the good Hip Hop?

Google not indexing my blog

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:45:04 +0200

If you are reading this, you probably kept my old feed in your RSS reader. Using Google Webmaster Tools, I got reminded that people actually subscribed to that. Right now, you lucky (ha!) few are the only ones reading my blog, the greater Internet is being deprived of the privilege because Google is not indexing it. For example search "john kleijn closures", you'll get Eli White's blog because Serendipity created a trackback for it, instead of my own post about closures. Search simply "John Kleijn" and you'll get my company website, some other links such as my PHPFreaks.com profile, and also some other guy called John Kleijn twice my age (okay, 1.5 times -- I'm getting old).

Continue reading "Google not indexing my blog"

Bad poetry

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:39:00 +0100

I tried my hand at poetry. It's deep, philosophical, it is the best poetry ever. Actually it is probably as good as my skills on the guitar.

Continue reading "Bad poetry"

Learning to play the guitar

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:12:24 +0100

That's right, I decided to join Jimmy Hendrix and.. Some other guys who were pretty good? As soon as I can play anything with more than an E and A minor, maybe I can play some Staind or System of a Down at your wedding (or funeral, same game). But seriously, I'll record something sometime so the Internet can have a little fun at my expense.

(The Stratocaster was "borrowed" from http://technabob.com/ btw).

Mandatory Hello World

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:40:33 +0100

Hello World,

After I stopped blogging at johnkleijn.nl about a year ago, I recently decided I wanted to start again. While johnkleijn.nl was purely about Web Development, this time I want to get other thoughts off my mind as well. I'm also going to try to write a little more often than once a month, it's not like I don't have a ton of incredibly interesting things to say, even if no one really cares about half of it.

When I write something that makes you want to hire me for PHP or JS development, go over to my company website. But this is also a personal blog, with opinions, bad and poor humor and stuff. When I write something that makes you want to pull my head through your monitor by my (fairly large) ears, troll about it in the comments.

I'll import some of the old posts, not sure if it's worth the trouble. If you visited my old blog and want a specific old post back, comment below.

I may also become active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, who knows. Before long, you could find yourself reading more John Kleijn than you can stomach.

John Kleijn.

Finally...

nospam@example.com (John Kleijn) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:05:00 +0100

I finally received all the parts for my new PC, and got it mostly running. I still want to make an OpenSuSE multiboot but that can wait for a little while.

I actually received the last parts last Wednesday, but my employer took my colleagues and me on a long weekend to Prague (thanks Coen, I had a great time), so I didn't have any time to assemble my new computer, let alone post anything on my blog.

Today isn't much different I'm afraid; it's Christmas and I'm going to my parents for diner.

But, you can expect more frequent posting in the coming days! One of the moderators over at phpfreaks.com asked if I could blog a little about an idea I had a while ago: running an entire PHP application as a daemon. Next I'll post about TDD and using SimpleTest with MockObjects, so you have that to look forward too.

Oh, and merry Christmas to any readers, naturally