DropClock is a screensaver in which time falls literally into the water. See the time goes by in slowwwwmotion.

Japanese people are just insane! And brilliantly funny at the same time..

Sometimes you need to build some user input validation on your website. Often I see people using String.Length() and StartsWith/EndWith constructions to check the entered values. Ofcourse this will work, but often this could also be done with Regular Expression. When I ask them, why they do it without this powerful tool they tell me: ‘It works this way and RegEx is way too difficult’.

They have a point when reading a RegExpression for the first time. Often it’s the best way to learn something, by just doing it and playing with it. Last week a saw a tool that is called the regex coach. This enables you to check your RegEx dynamically, without compiling code. So excellent to learn how to write your expression.

You can download this tool from the Regex Coach website.

Tip 1: there is a website called RegExLib with frequently used regular expressions. You don’t want to invent the wheel over and over again. (Like a RegEx for e-mail address validation)

Tip 2: It also contains a cheatsheet.

Good luck with building your creative regular expressions!

Sometimes you discover something that is already existing for some time but you haven’t been aware of. I was studying for MCTS certification and I discovered the Nullable type. With this you can assign boolean of datetime objects the NULL value. It’s use full when you want to declare types but leave them unassigned (and check later).

This is the code sample:

   1:          //Normal notation

   2:          Nullable<bool> b = null;

   3:          

   4:          //Shorthand notation

   5:          bool? b2 = null;

   6:          

   7:          //Since it's nullable, you have 2 new value members: 

   8:          // HasValue and Value

   9:          if (b.HasValue) Console.WriteLine("b is {0}", b.Value);

  10:          else Console.WriteLine("b is not set");

  11:          

  12:          //Throws exception:

  13:          //Console.WriteLine("b is {0}", b.Value); 

  14:          

  15:          //Outputs 'b is '

  16:          Console.WriteLine("b is {0}", b ); 

  17:          

  18:          b = true;

  19:          //Outputs 'b is True'

  20:          Console.WriteLine("b is {0}", b ); 

This is available since .NET framework version 2.0

Uno, dos, tres, Catorce!

Last night I experienced the U2 3D movie in the Pathe IMAX in Amsterdam. I was not sure what to expect, could that 3D be really good? At the door you get some sort of funny plastic glasses. You have to put them on to see the 3D. And it really worked! Waving hands when viewing from the crowd. Bono is staring at you like he’s right in front of you.

The screen was huge and had ultra high quality, better then a normal movie. And then sound.. 5.1 Surround Sound, that was really rocking! It was recorded during the U2 vertigo tour in Buenos Aires, Argentina. What an amazing show. The River Plate stadium was packed, must be over 100.000 people…

Last Saturday I was showing a friend of mine some of my new mp3’s. He really wanted those, so we tried to ‘backup’ some of those to his computer. After a short search we came up with a freeware program called iDump. It works really fine. A true software recommendation from me (Doesn’t work with the Touch though).

Last Thursday there was the 10th edition of the Dutch Spin awards. This is a prestigious prize for innovative Dutch website concepts. Some old colleagues of mine won several gold and silver prizes with their agency Achtung! 

It’s always good to see what other companies have built in the last year. Here are some nice entries that I really like:

• Volkswagen drive in - Guess game with which song is of the same age as the car?
• Hema viral campaign - A webshop layout combined with the game concept of ‘The incredible machine’
• http://www.laaf.info/ - A website that warns kids against fireworks
• Nederlands film festival - A site with several fake trailers. Examples (in Dutch): Van God Los 2 - roze is het nieuwe zwart. Zwartboek 2, dé romantische komedie van 2007. Kameleon 3 - schippers van de dood.
• Clipcaster - Combine youtube, karaoke and a webcam. Who is your idol?
• Bomvol - A online magazine with a lot of rich media. It links to the bookshop bol.com

These are some of the entries of the Spin awards, but there are more little gems..

Wondering what’s really going to be hot? Never want to miss a hype or trend? Then you should have this poster in your office

The collected the 300 most influential websites and put them on a map. Do you see Wordpress take a central connection point? Guess what my blog software is, heheh…

Web Trend Map 2008

Sometimes you need to know for sure that a column value is only used once in a table. Example: you don’t want to have more then 1 record with a social security number. Or maybe you are searching for a duplicate GUID (which BTW should be globally unique). Browsing by hand is not an option: the table is too large. And also the values to compare are difficult to read.

There is only 1 one way to tell for sure, use SQL:

SELECT * from <tablename> where __guid in (
    SELECT __guid
    FROM <tablename>
    GROUP BY __guid
    HAVING count(__guid) >= 2
)

(Sorry Dutch only!) Nu ik die GoogleVideo en YouTube eindelijk werkend heb binnen Word Press, maak ik gelijk even een inhaal slag met leuke dingen die op TV te zien waren en nog wel de moeite waard zijn om eens terug te zien. Ik begin maar even met wat me nu te binnen schiet. Toevalligerwijs beide in het zelfde genre: Hans Teeuwen en Jochem Myjer.

Hans Teeuwen was te gast bij de meiden van Halal en zorgde geheel op eigen wijze voor een spraakmakend televisie moment:

En dan Jochem. Hij was te gast bij de Mike en Thomas show. Hij krijgt de opdracht om een act op te voeren met 8 verschillende karakters. En dat doet hij natuurlijk weergaloos:

Als je een ander leuk videotje weet dat je van 2007 is bijgebleven zie ik ze graag tegemoet via de comments..